
COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT: 







SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS. 










Copyrighted, 1899, 

BY 

g£BEET & SMITH. 



t 



V 4$ 



^fep o? o$£ 









CONTENTS. 



TER. PA6WB . 

I. Its Early History 7 

II. Romans and Visigoths 21 

i III. The Mahometans in Spain 35 

IV. The Moslem Inundation 49 

V. The Northern Kingdoms 60 

VI. How Spain Redeemed Herself 74 

VII. A Consolidated Kingdom 88 

VIII. The Province op Granada 99 

IX. Within the Alhambra 113 

X. Plucking the Pomegranate 12$ 

XI. The Jews and the Moors Expelled 139 

XII. Isabella and Columbus 158 

XIII. The Fruits of Victory 165 

XIV. Queen Joanna and Charles V 175 

XV. Philip II* and the Esouri&l 187 

XVI. Spain Getting Exhausted 197 

XVII. Several Spanish Monarchs 209 

XVIII. Charles IV., Ferdinand VII. and Isabella II.. 219 

XIX. How the Bourbon Line was Broken 230 

XX. Modern Spain and Her Future 242 



SPAIN AND THE SPANIARDS. 



i. 



ITS EARLY HISTORY. 

" How much of iny young heart. O Spain, 
Went out to thee in days of yore. 
What dreams romantic filled my brain, 
And summoned back to life again 
The Paladins of Charlemagne, 
The Cid Campeador. 

' ' And shapes more shadowy than these, 
In the dim twilight half-revealed : 
Phoenician galleys on the seas, 
And Roman camps like hives of bees ; 
The Goth uplifting from his knees 
Pelayo on his shield. " 

The beginnings of Spain lead us back to the very 
caverns of history, to grope in the dim twilight of an 
obscure and almost forgotten past. For the earlier 
peoples of the Iberian peninsula kept no record of their 
achievements, preserved no chronicle of their doings, 
their rulers and their governments. Two features pre- 
sent themselves, as we scan the nearly obliterated pages 
of Spain's history : and we may choose whether to take 



8 ITS EARLY HISTORY. 

as our initial point, in this voyage of discovery, the 
primitive peoples of the north, the Basques of the 
Pyrenees, or the first city founded by the Phoenicians on 
the southern coast near the Strait of Gibraltar. 

Both have claims upon the consideration of the his- 
torian; but, as the first glimmerings of historical tradi- 
tions — we can hardly call them authentic, though prob- 
able — shone from the shores of southern Spain, out upon 
the waters of the Atlantic, we will heed them to the 
extent of beginning our investigations there. 

Traditional, indeed, one might term that history 
which claims, as the founder of the famed city of Cadiz, 
the Pygmalion of mythology, the royal sculptor who 
prayed Aphrodite to give life to the ivory statue he had 
made. Doubtless this ancient hero has been confounded 
with King Pygmalion of Tyre; but even so, another 
mythological figure arises in this connection, no less 
than great Hercules, some of whose "labors' ' were un- 
questionably performed in Spain. Not far from Cadiz, 
as distances are reckoned, rise the great Pillars of Her- 
cules, which guard the Strait of Gibraltar, and which, 
as all the world knows, were set up by the giant whose 
name they bear. 

After this performance, Hercules landed at or near 
the present city of Cadiz and there began his search for 
the oxen of the giant Geryones. 

More than this: Spain, it is said by geologists, is 
now the last remaining western headland of the lost 
Atlantis, from which it was wrenched, in some great 
cataclysm, and sunk beneath the ocean. It was in 



ITS EARLY HISTORY. 9 

Atlantis, according to authorities on this subject, that 
Hercules sought the golden apples of Hesperides. Thus 
we find here a triad of mythological creations : Pyg- 
malion Aphrodite and Hercules, whose connection 
with this coast — even though it may be argued against 
them that they never really existed — bestow upon it the 
halo of a great antiquity. 

Out of the mists of mythology, however, slowly rises 
the more substantial fabric of history; in the wake of 
fanciful heroes and deified navigators sail actual en- 
tities of blood and bone. These are the Phoenician sea- 
rovers, traders from Tyre on the far eastern shore of 
the Mediterranean, who have heard of vast mineral 
wealth concealed in the soil of Iberia, and, keen for 
traffic, penetrate even beyond the Pillars of Hercules. 

The rude and uncultured aborigines of the Iberian 
peninsula are thought to have been the remote ancestors 
of the present" people of the Pyrenees, the sturdy 
Basques, whose language is so uncouth that the devil 
himself, after seven years' vain effort to master it, was 
able to speak but two words, yes and no. This, at 
least, is the tradition that the Basques gleefully narrate 
to-day and which they seem to believe in. They also 
say that his Satanic Majesty was so disgusted at his 
failure that he shook the dust of the Basque country 
from his feet and has never been seen there since. Ac- 
cording to the philologists, this Basque language, or 
idiom, was once the universal speech of the peninsula, 
and to-day it is said there are all of two thousand 
words in universal use derived directly from it. Alex- 



ander von Humboldt, who studied the Basque, believed 
it to have been the ancient language of Iberia, and the 
Basques themselves declare that it was the veritable 
language of Father Adam in Paradise and was brought 
by Tubal Cain to Spain. 

It is as difficult to learn to-day as it ever was, having 
preserved, like the people who speak it, all its primi- 
tive simplicity and original barbarism. A certain 
modern writer even goes so far as to declare that while 
the Basques seem to understand each other's speech, he 
has grave doubts on the subject; for example, he adds, 
they may write a word similar to Solomon, but will 
pronounce it Nebuchadnezzar! Another author pro- 
fesses to have discovered that this language is identical 
with, or very similar to, the speech of some native 
Berber tribes in North Africa. 

As the only idiom that has held its own throughout 
all the mutations of Spanish history, the Basque is en- 
titled to respect. As a survival of the aboriginal speech 
it takes us back to those primitive peoples who were 
first found here in possession by the Phoenician sea- 
rovers, more than three thousand years ago. Related 
— as some affirm — on the one hand to the Celtic, and 
on the other to the aboriginal dialects of North Africa, 
it was probably spoken by the Aryan invaders who 
swept over the peninsula in the earliest times of which 
we have even a tradition. These Aryans found here 
an aboriginal people, the native Iberians, from whom 
the peninsula derived its name, and the union of the 
two produced the sturdy Celtiberians, stalwart of frame, 







uncultured warlike and quarrelsome worshippers of 
the elemental forces and objects of nature; in a word, 
as to their religion veritable pagans. 

Ever seeking the western islands of their mythology, 
on the watch for those fabled Atlantides of whom their 
great teachers had taught them, the restless Phoenician 
sailors coasted both northern and southern shores of the 
Mediterranean until they finally reached the Iberian 
coast. They probably founded a city, or at least a place 
for trading, at or near the present Barcelona, perhaps 
also at Tarragona; but it is known that they finally 
reached their farthest western limit at Cadiz. The 
province or surrounding region was known to the scrip- 
tural writers as Tarshish, and probably included the 
coast territory on both sides the River Guadalquiver's 
mouth. It is sometimes known by its Latin form of 
Tartessus, but the Phoenicians called it Gaddir, or 
the Fortress — a name probably applied to the city, and 
which the Romans subsequently knew as Gadez. 

Gold, silver and copper ores were abundant in the 
province or territory of Gaddir, in ancient times, and 
to-day copper is mined in great quantities in the prov- 
ince of Huelva, near the mouth of the Rio Tinto — 
which is so called from the color of its water. The 
Iberians and Celtiberians, then, being unacquainted 
with the value of the so-called precious metals, were 
very glad to trade their ores for the wares and manu- 
factures of the Tyrian trade merchants. Copper and 
silver were found in such abundance that the Phoeni- 
cian vessels were often laden with them to the water's 



1 o ITS EARL Y HISTOR T. 

edge, and the silver was wrought into anchors as well 
as into plate and ornaments : 

• 4 Past these shores the wise Phoenicians 
Coasted onward toward the West, 
Hoping there to find Atlantis 
And the Islands of the Blest. 
Somewhere in these mystic valleys 
Grew the golden-fruited trees 
Which the wandering sons of Zeus 
Stole from the Hesperides." 

Cadiz possesses to-day all the advantages which 
lured hither those bold sea-rovers of three thousand 
years ago ; which made it the greatest port of Spain 
during the conquest and colonization of America, when 
the fleets for the second, third and fourth voyages of 
Columbus were fitted out and assembled here ; when, a 
hundred years later, the vast Armada was brought to- 
gether here for the invasion and conquest of England ; 
whence, in 1805, the combined French and Spanish fleets 
sailed forth to their defeat at Trafalgar, when Nelson 
gave the death-blow to Spain's supremacy upon the 
ocean. 

Gaddir, Gadez, Cadiz, these are the names by which 
has been successively known the first Phoenician city 
on the coast of Spain, and whose ancient origin is per- 
petuated to-day in its civic coat-of-arms, upon which 
are engraved the figure of Hercules and the lions he 
strangled, when he came to this coast on adventure 
bent. The situation of this city, commanding as it 
does the entrance to a magnificent bay so vast that its 



ITS EARLY HISTORY. 13 

farther shores are dim in the distance as seen from the 
city, which is built on a neck of land between the sea 
and the river, early stamped this spot as the site of a 
great seaport. So it is no matter of wonder that it so 
soon became famous as the chosen port of the Phoeni- 
cians, even though situated beyond the confines of their 
then-known habitable world. 

Whether or no Pymalion — that is, the sculptor who 
fell in love with and married his vivified statue — 
founded Cadiz, it is a matter of world-wide credence 
that the sister of King Pygmalion of Tyre, who flour- 
ished centuries after, was the legendary foundress of 
Carthage. This event occurred about the middle of 
the ninth century before Christ, or some three hundred 
years after the alleged founding of Cadiz on the coast of 
Spain. Driven from Tyre by her brother, Pygmalion, 
who murdered her husband and uncle, taking with her 
vast treasure, and accompanied by a great number of 
noble Tyrians, Elissa — or Dido, as she is better known 
to history — put to sea, finally landing on the north 
coast of Africa. From the Numidian King Hiarbas 
sho purchased a tract of land on which to build her 
city. The agreement was that she should have as 
much land as she could encompass with the hide of a 
bullock, and she then performed that feat ever since 
known as "cutting a Dido," when she cut the hide into 
narrow thongs and thereby managed to surround with 
it a large area. King Hiarbas, it is related, was so 
strulk with her sagacity that he tried to force her to 









1 4 ITS EA RL Y HIS TOE Y. 

marry him, and to escape this fate Dido stabbed herself 
on a funeral pyre. 

This is the popular account, more or less mythical, of 
the founding of Carthage; and whether Queen Dido 
did as tradition relates, or not, at all events Carthage 
was founded by Phoenicians. It became in time the 
seat of a great African empire and centuries later was 
at war with Rome, waging that war chiefly in Sicily, 
for the exclusive possession of which the two nations 
contended. And it was as a consequence of this war 
in Sicily that the Carthaginians became involved in 
Iberian affairs more intimately than during the pre- 
ceding centuries, w r hen their traders merely visited 
Spain for traffic. 

After the great Carthaginian general, Hamilcar 
Barca, had been driven out of Sicily by the Romans, 
who thus brought to a close the first Punic war in 241 
B.C., he was for a time engaged in subduing his savage 
African mercenaries, whom he finally brought to terms. 
This was only accomplished, however, after severe 
fighting and a struggle prolonged during five years. 
Becoming disgusted at prospect of having to fight 
for Carthage with the mercenaries he could not depend 
upon, and foreseeing a continuance of the long struggle 
with Rome, Hamilcar Barca cast about for a new re- 
cruiting ground, and soon fixed upon the Iberian penin- 
sula. Here were vast hordes of Celts and Celtiberians, 
untrained, but brave, lacking only discipline and a 
leader to make of them most formidable fighting mate- 
rial. Even as, many centuries later, Great Britain 







ITS EARLY HISTORY. 15 

fought France and Napoleon Bonaparte in the Iberian 
peninsula, bringing about division and distraction of his 
armies, and eventually the destruction of his forces, so 
Carthage and Hamilcar prepared to attack Rome by the 
way of Spain and with the help of her soldiers. 

Invading the peninsula with a small army, about the 
year 238 or 239 B.C., he was so successful that when 
ten years later he fell by the assassin's hand, he had 
brought under subjection not only the people of south- 
ern Spain, but of portions of Lusitania, or Portugal. 
Succeeded by Hasdrubal, his son-in-law, who was also 
a soldier-statesman of the highest rank, Hamilcar's 
great work was still carried on, so that the year Has- 
drubal was assassinated, or in 221 B.C., the Carthagin- 
ians held all Spain as far north as the river Ebro. In the 
centuries succeeding to the founding of Cadiz, condi- 
tions had so changed that from desultory bands of mer- 
chant-sailors the Phoenicians had now become, 
through their African colonists of Carthage, almost the 
sole masters of the sea. They concentrated their fleets 
and soldiers at the spot selected by Hasdrubal as the 
site of a city which he founded here and called New 
Carthage, or Cartagena. Its harbor, capacious enough 
to hold all the fleets of that period, and with narrow 
entrance, strongly fortified, served as an admirably- 
chosen strategic base from which to project the various 
expeditions into the peninsula and along the coast, by 
which the barbarians were brought to vassalage. 

Hither came, while yet a youth, one who has been 
styled "the greatest captain that the world has seen," 



1 6 TTS EA RL T HIS TOR Y. 

Hannibal, son of Hamilcar, and the inveterate enemy 
of Rome. He was but nine years of age when, 
after swearing eternal enmity to Rome upon the altar 
of his god at Carthage, he was taken by his father to 
Spain. Born mid the throes of war and bred a soldier, 
married to an Iberian woman, and a comrade of her 
brethren, his influence among the rude soldiery of Spain 
was unbounded. At the death of Hasdrubal, when 
Hannibal was twenty-six years of age, he was unani- 
mously elected their leader and found himself in com- 
mand of a magnificent army of fifty-six thousand men 
and two hundred elephants. At least, this is the force 
Hasdrubal had assembled, trained and disciplined; and 
it was not in the nature of things that Hannibal should 
allow this invincible equipment to lie idle while there 
seemed a possibility for glory and conquest. So it was, 
that, two years after his accession, Hannibal marched 
against the nearest settlement in alliance with Rome, 
Saguntum, on the eastern coast to the north of the pres- 
ent city of Valencia. About 900 B.C. the Greeks had 
sent a colony to the Catalonian shores, on the east coast 
of Spain, and not long after had founded ill-starred 
Saguntum. In the pages of the historian Livy is a 
glowing characterization of the heroic Hannibal, and 
of the no less heroic Saguntines, who, after a siege of 
nearly a twelvemonth, finally became the prey of the 
Cathaginians. Choosing rather to perish with their 
beloved city than to be taken prisoners, the Saguntines 
made one last foray in which all the fighting men — all 
the male citizens, in fact — fell victims to their valor. 



ITS EARLY HISTORY. 17 

They had assembled their women and children around 
a vast pile of their most valuable possessions, previous 
to their foray, and had instructed them what to do in 
case of their defeat. In accordance with those instruc- 
tions, these surviving noncombatants set fire to the 
pile and cast themselves into the flames, so that when 
the victors entered through the breaches they had made 
in the walls, there was no foe upon which to wreak 
their vengeance, no plunder to reward their Herculean 
toil. Charred corpses and smoking ruins alone greeted 
their eyes; and thus Hannibal, though he had won a 
victory, was deprived of its most glorious results. 

As Saguntum was a dependent colony of Rome, the 
latter could not but resent this affront to her dignity, 
this setting at defiance of her might; and as soon as 
possible after the reception of the astounding intelli- 
gence, she set in motion her hitherto invincible legions. 
This, indeed, Hannibal had anticipated, had probably 
calculated upon. His army, at the siege of Saguntum, 
was estimated at more than one hundred and fifty 
thousand men. Leaving a strong force to defend Car- 
tagena and his base of supplies, he lost no time in 
marching northward along the coast of Spain, having 
as his ultimate destination the proud capital of his foes, 
no less than glorious Rome herself. The first Punic 
war had ended in the defeat of Hamilcar in Sicily; 
the fall of Saguntum precipitated the second, which 
resulted in the eventual loss to the Carthaginians of 
all Spain; and the third eventuated in the fall of 
Carthage itself. 



18 ITS EARLY HISTORY. 

Historians, civil and military, have pronounced 
against this apparently insane move of Hannibal in the 
direction of the Reman capital, thus leaving open to 
attack the widely-separated bases of Cartagena and 
Carthage, the one in Spain, the other on the north coast 
of Africa. But, notwithstanding its disastrous results, 
this mighty scheme of conquest projected by the im- 
placable Hannibal has compelled the admiration of man 
for nearly twenty centuries. Setting forth with an 
array of one hundred thousand horse and foot, and with 
a troop of trained elephants whose prestige was so ter- 
rifying to the Latins, this commander pressed forward 
to and beyond the confines of the peninsula. This was 
the beginning of that wonderful campaign against 
Rome, which lasted fifteen years and brought the 
African army to the gates of the capital itself. Nearly 
three-fourths of his army perished in the terrible pas- 
sage of the Alps, yet, undismayed, Hannibal pressed 
on in the direction the fates had ordained he should go, 
defeating army after army sent against him, and strik- 
ing terror to the heart of Rome. As an example of the 
man's invincible purpose, as an inspiration to future 
ages, showing what an unconquerable spirit inspired 
by any great aim or ambition can accomplish, this cam- 
paign of Hannibal the Carthaginian against the over- 
whelmingly numerous armies of Rome is a fruitful 
lesson. That it ended in eventual disaster was not so 
much the fault of the commander as of his enemies at 
Carthage, who recalled him to the defense of that city 
when supreme victory was almost within his grasp. 







ITS EARL T HISTOR Y. 1 



They had, also, been extremely remiss in aiding him 
with men and supplies, leaving him alone to combat 
his swarming foes far from any base which could be 
of use to him. The Romans, also, had taken a leaf 
from his own book of tactics, and even as he had at- 
tempted the freedom of Carthage and Spain by carry- 
ing the war into their own country, now turned about 
and carried the war into Africa. By his great victory 
over Hannibal and his virtual capture of Carthage, 
the Roman Scipio obtained his distinguishing sur- 
name, "Africanus," in October, 202 B.C. 

Affairs in Spain, meanwhile, turned out about as 
might have been expected, for while Hannibal's 
brother, Hasdrubal, at first defeated and flanked a 
Roman army under Cneius Scipio, and afterward 
marched to the assistance of the Africans, yet he was 
later defeated by the consul Nero and lost not only his 
army but his head. Another Scipio, Publius Cornelius, 
the same who later conquered Carthage and made an 
end of Hannibal, next appears in Spain. He had met 
him previously in Italy, but escaped somehow from 
the defeats in which he was involved to meet and battle 
with Hasdrubal's army, which he vainly essayed to 
prevent from crossing the Pyrenees. But by skillful 
strategy he captured the Carthaginian stronghold, 
Cartagena, taking with it an immense spoil and many 
prisoners. This was but the beginning of Carthaginian 
losses in Spain, and by the end of 206 B.C., four years 
before Hannibal's defeat in Africa, all of African 
Spain was in possession of the Romans. The very last 



20 






ITS EARLY HISTORY. 




Carthaginian city of consequence to fall was Cadiz; 
and thus, after nine centuries of commercial and mili- 
tary supremacy in Spain, Phoenician power was to end 
where it had begun, destined never more to assert itself 
beyond the Pillars of Hercules. 



H0MAN8 AND VISIGOTHS. 21 



II. 

ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

The plans of Hannibal had miscarried and the 
Romans were not only triumphant at home, but 
abroad, in Spain and in Africa. Not many years 
passed by ere the Iberian peninsula, which had hitherto 
nourished the barbarian Celts and their allies, had fur- 
nished troops and material for war to Carthage, had 
sent silver and gold to Tyre and mercenaries into Italy, 
became in reality as well as in name a Roman province. 
Under various consuls, or proconsuls, it was governed 
from Rome, and was soon divided into Hither and 
Farther Spain. It was about this time, probably, that 
the peninsula became known as Espana or Hispania, 
which has been moderized or rather anglicized, into its 
present name of Spain. But, M T hile the Romans had 
ousted their African enemies, yet there remained for 
them great work to do. That they did it, that they 
gradually imposed upon the conquered peoples their 
language and their customs, that they built bridges 
and roads, cities and theaters — erected those imperish-' 
able monuments that no other people could have 
created in so short a time — all Spain, even at the pres- 
ent time, attests. 

Their first great labor was the overcoming of the 



22 ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

native Celtiberians, who, as brave and warlike as ever, 
and quondam allies of the Carthaginians, were hard to 
conquer. Those of the ccast fled to the interior, where 
they intrenched themselves among the hills and moun- 
tains, and for many years defied the efforts of the 
Roman armies to subjugate them. A hundred Celtibe- 
rian towns, it is chronicled, were taken and romanized 
by the three Gracchi — the. elder, and after him his two 
sons. Defeats came to the Romans, at intervals, as for 
instance when their army under Mummius was over- 
whelmed by the Lusitanians, who w r ere for years in 
rebellion. 

The most serious of these uprisings against Roman 
authority was that of these barbarous Lusitanians, 
dwellers mainly in that portion of the Iberian peninsula 
now known as Portugal. Under the rude and simple, 
though valiant and courteous shepherd-chieftain, Viri- 
athus, who, from a friend of the Romans, had been 
driven to become their most implacable enemy, through 
their own treachery and failure to perform their 
promises by treaty, the natives were often led to vic- 
tory and held for years their enemies at bay. 

It is a strange commentary on the repetitions of his- 
tory that his defection was brought about through cir- 
cumstances similar to those which precipitated the 
latest rebellion in Cuba in 1878. In this case, as in 
that of Spain when dealing with Cuba, a foreign power 
was seeking to treat with rebellious natives who resisted 
the imposition of their authority. Driven to treat, at 
last, the Cubans (as may be recalled, at the end of 




ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 23 

their "ten-years'-war"), signed a treaty with the 
Spaniards, by which their practical autonomy was to 
be secured, This treaty, how T ever, the Spanish Cortes 
refused to acknowledge, and thus the Cubans gained 
nothing through their concessions, and were eventually 
driven into the last uprising, which had so disastrous 
an ending for the Spaniards. Viriathus stipulated with 
the Roman generals for the independence of the Lusi- 
tanians, and in good faith surrendered ; but the treaty 
was rejected by the Roman senate and he was again 
driven to take up arms in defense of his country and 
principles. His revolt lasted practically from the year 
147 to 134 B.C., and was only brought to a close by his 
assassination at the hands of reputed friends and the 
fall of Numantia, where the scenes of Saguntum were 
in effect repeated, all the garrison and inhabitants fall- 
ing by famine and in battle. 

Before this Celtiberian city of Numantia the Romans 
had gathered nearly all their armies, comprising in the 
end more than sixty thousand men, and commanded by 
one of their greatest generals, Scipio the Younger, or 
Africanus Minor, who had entirely destroyed African 
Carthage, twelve years before, and now followed the 
same course with Numantia. 

All the great names famous in Rome during the 
height of its glory were inscribed on the scroll of Spain's 
history during those troublous times: The Gracchi, 
the three Scipios, learned Cato, Junius Brutus, and 
later Metellus, Pompey, and great Caesar. All these 
gained imperishable laurels in Spain, even if they 



24 ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

did not receive their training at arms there. Thus the 
distant province became a field in which Rome tried 
the temper of her soldiers. 

About the beginning of the first century before 
Christ the Romans sustained great losses through the 
defection of one of their own soldiers, the brave but 
misguided Quintus Sertorius. He had served under 
the veteran Marius and taken prominent part in the 
fractional quarrels which divided and weakened Rome 
at that time of her highest empire and w T hich caused 
ultimate defeat to her armies. Sertorius was driven by 
Sully to Spain, where he made friends with the Lusi- 
tanians. Among them he gained great power, being 
worshipped almost as a demigod. His chief accessory 
to gain the superstitious reverence of his followers was 
a white fawn, which went with him everywhere and to 
w 7 hich was ascribed supernatural virtues, especially in 
divination. But at all events, Sertorius did not depend 
wholly upon supernatural aids. for his victories, being 
like the great Napoleon of centuries later, a firm be- 
liever in the efficacy of sturdy battalions. 

He held out against some of Rome's greatest gen- 
erals, and kept his people in revolt for many years, 
until finally a young man named Pompey was sent out 
to conquer him. He was also treated to defeat by the 
sturdy veteran. But again, as in the case of Viriathus, 
the base assassin's aid w T as invoked, and Sertorius fell 
a victim to treachery at a banquet prepared in his 
honor, and his enemy triumphed. Pompey succeeded 
in pacifying the revolted Lusitaniane, marching from 







ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 25 

victory to victory, and when he returned to Rome was 
hailed with acclaim and accorded a ''triumph." 

Nor was Pompey the last great Roman to win undying 
fame in the province of Spain, for the man who became 
later his deadly rival and enemy acquired not only fame, 
but fortune, as proconsul of Hispania ulterior; no less 
than Caesar, of immortal memory. The century was but 
half -completed ere the latter met and defeated the 
legates of Pompey, in Spain, the year before he caused 
the final downfall of his stubborn rival atPharsalia; 
and four years later Caesar rose to complete supremacy 
by winning the great battle over Pompey's sons, in 
which one of them was slain, at Munda, near the city 
of Ropian foundation, Cordova, which subsequently 
became famous as a capital of the Moors. 

With his vast capability for the management of 
affairs of magnitude, Caesar soon reduced order out of 
the chaotic conditions in Spain, and started the country 
upon a career of prosperity which lasted, with but few 
intermissions, for the next four centuries. Roman 
Spain became the grandest province of the empire, the 
chosen abode of wealth and literature, and in the ensu- 
ing years men were born there who have left more than 
an ephemeral impression upon the times in which they 
lived. At the Roman city of Italica, which is now a 
mass of ruins, near Seville, were born Hadrian and 
Trajan; of a Spanish family came Marcus Aurelius 
and Antoninus; and Spain also boasts the names of 
such as the two Senecas, Lucan, Martial, and others. 

The Romans ruled Spain for about six hundred years, 



VH • I 




26 1WMAKS AND VISIGOTHS. 



and on the whole wisely and well; the long peace was 
so nearly unbroken, during nearly four centuries, that 
nothing of importance occurs to chronicle. 

Spain became civilized, even Romanized, her barba- 
rian tongues being succeeded by a bastard Roman or 
Latin, which subsequently became modified by the 
Gothic, thus giving rise, in the course of years, to a 
speech entirely peculiar to Spain itself. This was ac- 
complished by the inflow of a flood of Goths, who after- 
ward came to be the ruling people; as we will proceed 
to relate. 

An invasion of the Franks, about a.d. 236, disturbed 
Spain somewhat, but w T as of little importance, jave as 
the precursor of what was to come. In the latter part 
of the fourth century Italy was overrun by hordes of 
barbarians, who, in the early part of the fifth century, 
became a menace to the nation. In the year 408 Rome 
itself was threatened by Alaric, who appeared at its 
gates and demanded tribute of gold, silver, silks and 
slaves. This was given him, but he later returned, 
sacked the imperial city and left it humiliated. With 
the hand of the barbarian at her throat, Rome could 
give but little aid to Spain in repelling the hordes of 
Alani, Suevi and Vandals, which about this time swept 
over the Pyrenees into her northern provinces and 
stopped not in their devastating flight until they had 
swept the country from northern border to southern 
coast. The Vandals passed over into Africa, where 
they founded a short-lived empire, but they left behind 




ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 27 

memories of excesses and ravage that have lasted till 
the present day. 

Alaric, conqueror of Rome, died and left his migrant 
and vagrant horde to the care of one Athaulf, who led 
his followers from Italy into Gaul, first, however, mak- 
ing love to and marrying by fprce the .beautiful sister 
of the Emperor Honorius, who by some means had been 
captured and was held a prisoner. That she was not a 
willing wife to Athaulf, appears from her subsequent 
history ; for she was sought by a former lover, taken 
away from her husband and back to Rome, where she 
became mother of one high in the annals of fame in 
future years, the Emperor Valentinian. 

The Visigoths, as they were called, to distinguish 
them from the eastern, or Ostrogoths, were able and 
virile, even if barbarians, and early fell under the in- 
fluences of the Latin religion, the Arian branch of it, 
to which they clung consistently for a long period. In 
order to get rid of them, Rome allowed them to settle 
in some of the southern provinces of Gaul, and it was 
while there that they performed her a great service in 
acting as a bulwark against the overwhelming floods of 
Suevi and Vandals; in the year 428 participating in a 
defeat sustained by the Roman army, inflicted by 
Genseric the Vandal. The Visigothic kingdom was then 
ruled over by King Theodoric, who was assisted at that 
great victory by the allied Goths and Romans, by which 
the southward-sweeping scourge of Huns was arrested 
and overthrown. The king lost his life in the conflict 
and was succeeded by a son of the same name, and he 



gg BOMAXS AXD VISIGOTHS. 

by his brother, Evaric, under whom Roman authority 
was cast off and defied and Spain made into a Visigothic 
kingdom. His successor, Alaric II., established his 
capital at Toledo, according to some writers, where for 
the first time we find the Visigoths permanently settled. 

Toledo, the "Toledoth" of the Jews, is said by them 
to have been founded by their ancestors who left Pales- 
tine in the days of the great Nebuchadnezzar. It comes 
into Spanish history as early at least as about 200 B.C., 
when it was taken by the Romans, and even then was 
a large and populous city. 

Situated on a commanding promontory above the 
golden Tagus, it contains almost imperishable relics of 
the Romans, Goths, Jews, Moors and Christians, the 
various buildings on its hills telling of their origin, like 
geologic strata. The impression a visitor to Toledo re- 
ceives to-day is that it is a Gothic city, yet its finest 
architecture is Moorish, except for the cathedral, which 
is Gothic — though not built by the early Goths. In 
fact, the Goths and Visigoths have left very few per- 
manent memorials of their presence here, nor in any 
other part of Spain. The grand old bridge spanning 
the Tagus is a Romano-Gothic, and there are some 
buildings bearing the impress of that style of architec- 
ture. 

Here in Toledo the Goths, after many years of wan- 
dering, maintained their capital, and here reigned the 
long line of kings, to the number of thirty and more. 
Very few of whom, it is said, ever died a peaceful 
death. As rigid Aryans, the Goths were at first cele- 







ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 29 



brated, but finally, through the constant pressure of the 
Roman bishops, they came to profess the more modern 
doctrine. One of the most vigorous of the Gothic 
rulers, King Leovigild, was such an uncompromising 
Aryan that he put to death his youngest son for adopt- 
ing the religion of his French wife and becoming a 
Catholic, while a brother, Recared, stood by unmoved 
and saw the deed performed. Yet it was not long after, 
according to the chronicles, that this same Recared, 
after he had succeeded to the throne, on the death of his 
father, turned Catholic himself, and persecuted his 
Aryan subjects relentlessly. 

Of the many rulers who lived in Toledo, few are 
worthy of particular mention. This one, Recared, was 
the means of turning all the nation from Aryanism to 
Catholicism, and has the reputation of being the first 
of that long line of bigoted kings, beginning with him- 
self, in the sixth century, and ending not until the pass- 
ing away of Ferdinand VII., in the nineteenth — a line 
which has consistently supported the acts of inquisitors 
and destroyers of heretics. He attempted the expulsion 
of the Jews, and relented only when they, too, promised 
to conform to the rules of the new religion. 

That the line and names of kings are more or less 
fictional is proved by the uncertainty surrounding the 
deeds and eventual disappearance of the very last to 
reign, King Roderick. To this day, indeed, all Spain 
is divided as to the guilt or innocence of this king, who 
was accused by his enemies of having committed a 
dastardly act, . Perhaps the most picturesque figure of 






30 ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

them all is old King Wamba, who was elected to reign 
over the people while engaged in tending his flocks as 
a simple shepherd. He protested in vain that he did 
not want to ascend the throne, but was compelled against 
his will; and he became such a terror to crime and 
criminals that he was soon invited to step down and 
out. By this time, however, having had a taste of 
royalty, he likfcd it so well that he w r ould not resign; so 
some conspirators one day administered a dose of medi- 
cine that threw him into a deep sleep, during which he 
was stripped of bis kingly robes and garbed in a monk's 
cowl and cloak. This had been done at the jnstance of 
the ecclesiastics, who desired a person of their own 
choosing on the throne; and as it was a law of the 
land that a monk once garbed should always w r ear the 
cowl, there was nothing for King Wamba to do but 
accept his fate and retire to a cloister. 

Whatever is true in these Gothic chronicles, at least 
there is evident the hand of the priest and the bishop; 
at this time began that interference in affairs of state 
by so-called "holy" men, which continued to the time 
of Isabella and Ferdinand, and beyond. It was one 
Erwic, who, according to tradition, gave Wamba the 
soporific draught that proved so disastrous to his ambi- 
tions^ and who, after the latter had retired to a monas- 
tery near Burgos, ascended the throne, which he all 
along had coveted. Instigated by the Bishop of Toledo, 
ho enacted oppressive laws against the Jews, who were 
driven almost to open rebellion. His successor, Egica, 
who was also his son-in-law, took issue with some of 



ROMANS AND VI8IQ0TH8. 31 

the clergy on account of a lack of courtesy on their part 
toward the throne, and banished the primate of Spain, 
Sisbert, who had conspired to assassinate the royal 
family. This shows the lax condition of things at the 
capital, and the constant friction between the ecclesi- 
astics and the rulers, which latter the ecclesiastics ap- 
parently set up and pulled down at their pleasure. 

In the last years of Egica's reign a law was enacted 
by the ecclesiastical council of Toledo which declared 
the virtual enslavement of all the Spanish Jews and 
their distribution among the Christian families of the 
kingdom. This was the last straw that broke the back 
of the long-suffering Jews in Spain ; it was probably 
the one act necessary to precipitate that long-impending 
avalanche of Moslems from Africa, which so soon fell 
and engulfed all Spain. Contrasting their own condi- 
tion with that of their co-religionists in Africa, subject 
to the Moslems, and the similarity of their faith to th^t 
of the Mahomet's followers, there is little doubt that 
the oppressed sons of Israel not only conspired with 
those of their faith across the Mediterranean, but 
actually invited the Arabs to come over and possess the 
country. This is a most natural assumption, at all 
events; but the actual invasion of Spain by the Moslem 
Arabs, which soon occurred, has been ascribed to the 
thoughtless and criminal acts of the last Gothic king, 
Roderick, the successor to Witica, who came after 
Egica. The real reason that the hapless Roderick was 
made a scapegoat for all the misfortunes of Gothic 
Spain may be found, it has been stated, in his opposi- 



32 ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

tion to the ecclesiastics, in their temporal rather than 
their spiritual affairs. If not a friend of the persecuted 
Jews, at least he was not actively their enemy; he was 
given to the working of reforms within the kingdom 
and the church which many viewed with apprehension, 
and he was overfond of luxurious living. 

Looking off from the fortified walls of Toledo, and 
down toward the roaring river Tagus, one may still 
see the ruins of what are called the Baths of Florinda, 
where, tradition tells us, the beautiful daughter of 
Count Julian was bathing when King Roderick saw 
her and became enamored of her charms. Another 
story has it that he first saw her playing with some 
female companions in his own palace, whither she had 
been invited by his wife. Whichever story be told, it 
has as its motive the guilty intercourse of King Rod- 
erick and the fair Florinda, daughter of Count Julian, 
an attendant upon his court. Count Julian was alcalde 
of Ceuta, on the African side of the Strait, and held in 
a measure the fate of Spain in his hands. The Moslems 
were then in possession of all the African coast as far 
west to the westward as the point opposite Gibraltar, 
and were doubtless preparing for an invasion, when 
the time should seem propitious, of the Christian land 
across the Strait. The Moslem comma^der^ fierce old 
Tarik, was one day approached by Count Julian with 
the proposition to conduct him and his army to the 
country of their desires and to assist him in conquering 
the Christian hosts. His offer was accepted, and 
after the Moslems had spied out the country, they 







ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 



sent over a great force, which was opposed by a still 
greater one under King Roderick. They met on or 
near the banks of the Rio Guadalete, at the plain of 
Xeres, the Christian army one hundred thousand strong, 
but containing a host of traitors within its ranks, led 
by Bishop Oppas, a brother of the former King Witica, 
and the latter's two sons, as well as Count Julian and 
his followers. At the appointed moment, and when the 
battle raged at its fiercest, they all broke and went over 
to the enemy, with the result that the Goths were most 
disastrously defeated and the Moslems triumphant on 
every side. King Roderick was last seen fleeing the 
field mounted on a milk-white charger, and his golden 
sandals are said to have been found among the 
reeds on the river bank; but he was never after found 
alive, and is supposed to have perished. But, while 
authentic history is silent respecting his fate, yet song 
and legend have celebrated this unfortunate Roderick, 
the last king of the Goths. 



The hosts of Don Kodrigo were scattered in dismay, 
When lost was the eighth battle, nor heart nor hope had they ; 
He, when he saw the field was lost, and all his hope was flown, 
He turned him from his flying host, and took his way alone. 

His horse was bleeding, blind, and lame — he could no farther go ; 
Dismounted, without path or aim, the king stepped to and fro; 
It was a sight of pity to look on Roderick, 
For, sore a thirst, and hungry, he staggered faint and sick. 



34 ROMANS AND VISIGOTHS. 

'' He looked for the brave captains that led the hosts of Spain, 
But all were fled except the dead, and who could count the 

slain? 
Where'er his eye could wander, all bloody was the plain, 
And, while thus he said, the tears he shed ran down his cheeks 

like rain : 



1 Last night I was the King of Spain — to-day no king am I ; 
Last night fair castles held my train — to-night where shall 

I lie? 
Last night a hundred pages did serve me on the knee — 
To-night not one I call mine own ; not one pertains to me. 

4 Oh, luckless, luckless was the hour, and cursed was the day, 
When I was born to have the power of this great seignory ! 
Unhappy me, that I should see the sun go down to-night ! 
O Death, why now so slow art thou, why fearest thou to 
smite?' " 







THE MAHOMETANS m SPAIN. 35 



III. 

THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN. 

The soil of Spain had been ploughed by the native 
Iberians, surveyed by the Phoenicians, harrowed by the 
Goths and Romans ; but its harvests were to be gath- 
ered by the Mahometans. From the north coast of 
Africa, out of the wilds of the "mysterious continent," 
came those people who were to change the aspect of all 
Spain, who were to impose a new religion upon its in- 
habitants, and cause the country to blossom with an 
Oriental architecture. 

They are certainly deserving of a few words of ex- 
planation, before we leave behind us the native races 
and follow in the train of these new arrivals. "The 
ancients," says a celebrated French author, "have left 
us no trustworthy documents upon those people who 
first settled the north coast of Africa. According to 
Sallust, this territory was first inhabited by two native 
races, the Getules and the Libyans; but later the for- 
mer united with the Medes and Persians and from the 
fusion of these two elements (one autochthon and the 
other Asiatic) sprang the Numidians, represented at 
the present day by the indigenous natives, or the so- 
called Berbers. 



36 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 

" This tradition from the annals of the Numidian kings 
easily account for facts that are being proven to-day. 
The dark type would represent the descendants of the 
Numidians, while the fair type, which is not so numer- 
ous, and is found more especially in Morocco, would 
represent the posterity of the armies of the Medes and 
Persians. Tradition is also preserved of a Semitic in- 
vasion from Canaan, supporting which is the fact that 
the Berbers have always had more affinity with the 
Semitic race and the Canaanites than the Aryans. 

"If we compare the native Berbers with the Touareges 
(or wild Bedouins) it is easily seen that a relationship 
exists between them; they speak the same language, 
and their written characters are precisely the same as 
those in the rare inscriptions found in the mountains of 
Algeria and called Lybic. The origin of the Touareges 
is evidently Oriental, probably from the Arabian pen- 
insula on the borders of the Red Sea. Other invasions, 
either from Spain or from the Mediterranean coast, 
have without doubt co-operated in the formation of this 
Algerian people, the Berbers; but this ethnic contin- 
gent had not, before the Arabian conquest, furnished 
an element important enough to modify any o^the 
essential traits in the characteristic physiognomy of 
the primitive populations of Algiers. 

"From the finding of megalithic monuments in Spain 
similar to those found in North Africa, some writers 
have supposed an Aryan invasion through Europe, 
across the Strait of Gibraltar, after the death of Her- 
cules; but this is not so probable as the invasion along 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 37 

the African coast. An invasion of Iberians (from 
Spain) is not very certain; and as to the Greeks — they 
did not reach so far as Algeria even. The first people, 
then, in historic times who came here to settle were the 
Phoenicians; but they came (at first, at all events) 
merely for trade, and had no perceptible effect upon 
the native types. It was quite the opposite with the 
Moslem conquest; for from the first the Arabs imposed 
their religon and their language upon the greater num- 
ber of the inhabitants. In the plains, indeed, their in- 
fluence was such that it soon became impossible to 
distinguish the victors from the vanquished. The 
mountaineers resisted longer, but finally became zealous 
converts to Islamism. 

"But, in consequence of their invasion of Spain, and 
the struggles of all kind they had to undergo, it was 
not long before the Arabs themselves disappeared from 
Algiers. Another invasion, however, took place in the 
eleventh century, and after having ravaged the coun- 
try, the greater part of the3e tribes settled in the south- 
eastern part of Algeria, near the frontiers of Morocco, 
where they are now installed. A few even went into 
the interior of Morocco and helped by their arms to 
establish the dynasty which is reigning there to-day. 
The Arab Berbers speak an Arab dialect, which contains 
but very few native words. And as a rule, the farther 
one goes into the desert, the purer he will find the 
Arabic spoken by the people. The Arab Berbers are 
revengeful, courageous, honest among themselves, and 
of a very warlike nature, seizing upon the most trivial 



H| 



38 THE MAHOMETAN'S IN SPAIN. 

pretext to take up arms and make a razzia, or pillaging 
excursion, into a neighboring territory." 

These are the representatives to-day of the fierce 
warriors who united with the Arabs in their invasion 
of Spain, in the early years of the eighth century. 

Let us now glance at the home and customs of the 
Arabs themselves, who initiated that invasion and who 
made an indelible impression not only upon Spain, but 
upon North Africa as well. The Arabs, who previous 
to the rise of Mahomet, were hardly coherent enough to 
be recognized as a national entity, and who were in 
their religion merely pagans or nature worshippers, 
like the Iberians, within one hundred years after the 
"hegira," or flight of their prophet, overran Persia, 
Syria, North Africa and the southwestern portion of 
Europe. We have seen that the Gothic or Spanish 
Jews were more favorable to the Moslems than to the 
Goths or Christians. This arose from their racial con- 
nection with the Arabs, both being Semitic, and from 
the points of similarity in their religion. Mahometan- 
ism, as is well known, is based upon our own Holy 
Writ, the Koran, in many parts, being a mere tran- 
scription of the Bible. Mecca was substituted later for 
Jerusalem, but Mahomet adopted nearly all the Jewish 
prophets in a body, the list comprising Adam, Seth, 
Noah, Abraham, Moses, Jesus, etc., to whom was 
added Mahomet, of course. Islamism insists upon a 
belief in God, in angels, in the prophets — of whom 
Mahomet is chief — in the Koran, and in predestination 
or fatalism. The chief distinction being that while 




;---r. M .^-. .-",-• <:•,:;.; : . 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 39 



Christianity is a religion of love (as preached by 
Christ), the religion of Mahomet is one of the sword. 
At least, it became so, and during his life, at that; and 
was particularly acceptable to the fierce sons of the 
desert among whom he dwelt. 

After the death of Mahomet there were two rival 
candidates for his mantle. Ali, his cousin and son-in- 
law, husband of Fatima; and Abu Bekr, father of 
Ayesha, his favorite wife, and who was finally elected 
Caliph, or Commander of the Faithful. The numerous 
sects and schisms date from this division ; but still, an 
army of conquest was sent into Syria and took the city 
of Damascus, to which the caliphate was removed in 
673. Another army was sent into Egypt, which took 
Cairo and Alexandria. North Africa to the west of 
Egypt at that time was known under its Roman names 
of Numidia, Tingitania and Mauritania, and to this 
vast region collectively comprised in those provinces a 
trusted general was appointed named Musa or Moses. 
His armies quickly reduced the Berbers to subjection 
and they flocked by thousands to his banner and his 
mosques, which were soon established, with their 
kibbah or holy niche toward Mecca; at the opposite 
end the minaret, from a balcony of which the muezzin 
sent forth the call to prayer. During the first years of 
the eighth century, Islamism, under Al Walid, Caliph 
of Damascus, "was established from the banks of the 
Ganges to the Atlantic surges." 

Musa was created Emir of Africa and the supreme 
commander of all the Moslems of the west. Serving 







40 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN. 

under him were his six stalwart sons, one whom took 
Tangier (called Tingis by the Romans, and by the 
Arabs Tan j ah). Command of the army at this point 
was given to an Arab chieftain named Tarik Ibu Zeyad 
Ibu Abdillah, whom, as he had lost an eye in battle, 
his soldiers (who were devoted to him) called "Tarik 
the One-eyed," or El Tuerto, for short. This was the 
redoubtable general w r ho commanded the first small 
force sent over across the Strait, from Ceuta to Gibral- 
tar — from the African to the Spanish "Pillar of Her- 
cules," in fact — to spy out the fair land of Spain. 
Meanwhile the bulk of the Arab- Berber army was 
gathering at Tangier. "For more than three-quarters 
of a century soldiers, and the sons of soldiers, conquer- 
ors and the sons of conquerors, they were burning for 
yet greater conquests." 

The Arabs, then, were those who brought Africa and 
Spain under Moslem rule, and they were aided by such 
others of African tribes and origin as had been con- 
verted to their faith. Their mainspring of action, as 
we have seen, may be found in their religion, the faith 
of Islam, or resignation to the will of God — as in- 
terpreted by Mahomet. And this belief, as they in- 
terpreted it, made it incumbent upon all true believers 
to slay all unbelievers "for righteousness' sake," in 
short that they carried the flaming sword in place of 
the cross. 

A learned writer has said of Islam ism : "Monotheism 
was its keystone, and predestination its supporting 
columns. . . . La Vlaha, ilia Allah, Maha aimed 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 41 

resoul Allah: * There is no God but Allah, and the 
Mohamet is prophet of Allah. "' 

As good Mahometans, the soldiers of this first army 
of invasion were enjoined strictly to prayer, alms-giv- 
ing — when practicable — fasting, and the pilgrimage 
to Mecca. They were supposed to pray at least 
four times a day; or in every twenty-four hoars: 
at azohbi, just before dawn; adokar, just after the 
meridian; almagreb, before sunset; and alaska, in the 
evening. To-day, in Tangier, the city where their 
armies gathered, restlessly awaiting the order to cross 
the Strait, one may yet find their mosques (which no 
Christian may enter) and hear the muezzin, at sunset, 
chant: " Come to prayers, come to prayers; it is better 
to pray than to sleep!" 

Although many hundred miles from Damascus, yet 
Musa, the Arab general, was obliged to send back to 
the Caliph for permission to make the attempt upon 
Spain. This the Commander of the Faithful was 
gracious enough to send, and so an army about twelve 
thousand strong was collected on the African shore, 
near Ceuta, the ancient Abyla of former times, and 
recently used as a Spanish penal settlement, in which 
many Cubans, natives of America, have been unjustly 
imprisoned. Right in sight, rearing its crest against 
the Spanish sky, rose the great Rock of Calpa, after 
this event called Gibraltar, Gebel el Tarik — in honor 
of old Tuerto, the One-eyed ; a name which has stuck 
through all the centuries since, and doubtless will for- 
ever remain. It is not known whether or not the Arabs 



aMHHB9HBHBH 




42 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 



surmised the existence of the conjectural underground 
passage from the African to the European shore, by 
which it is said the last remaining apes of the other 
continent gain access to the mighty rook. But if they 
did they made no use of it, even if they searched; but 
were toilfully ferried across in vessels none too large 
for comfort. It is no matter of surprise to find that 
Tarik burned his ships behind him, after he and his 
command had landed, thereby setting an example to 
Hernando Cortez, some eight centuries later, in Mexico; 
for they were probably unseaworthy, and besides, those 
Arab warriors were \v T eary of seeking new countries, 
and fully determined to stay right where they were. 
It is thought that the base Count Julian reaped rich 
rewards from his perfidy; but, according to the talented 
historian of Spain, they availed him naught. "He had 
gratified his vengeance; he had been successful in his 
treason, and had acquired countless riches from the 
ruin of his country. . . . But, wherever he went Count 
Julian read hatred in every eye. The Christians 
cursed him as the cause of all their woes ; the Moslems 
despised him and distrusted him as a traitor. Men 
whispered together as he approached, and then turned 
away in scorn; mothers snatched away their children 
in horror if he offered to caress them. He withered 
under the execration of his fellow -men, and at last he 
began to loathe himself. For a time he sought in 
luxurious indulgence to soothe or forget the miseries of 
the mind. He assembled around him every gratifica- 
tion and pleasure that boundless wealth could purchase; 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 43 

but all in vain. . . . He sent to Ceuta for his wife 
Frandina, his daughter Florinda, and his youthful son 
Alarbot; hoping in the bosom of his family to find that 
sympathy and kindness which he could no longer meet 
with in the world. Their presence, however, brought 
him no alleviation. Florinda, the daughter of his 
heart, for whose sake he had undertaken this signal 
vengeance, was sinking a victim to its effects. Wher- 
ever she went she found herself a byword of shame 
and reproach. The outrage she had suffered was im- 
puted to her as wantonness and her calamity was mag- 
nified into a crime. The Christians never mentioned 
her name without a curse and the Moslems, the gainers 
by her misfortune, spake of her only by the appellation 
of Cava, the vilest epithet they could apply to woman. 
"But the opprobrium of the world was as nothing to 
the upbraidings of her own heart. She charged herself 
with all the miseries of these disastrous wars; the 
deaths of so many gallant cavaliers; the conquest and 
perdition of her country. The anguish of her mind 
preyed upon the beauty of her person. . . . When her 
father sought to embrace her she withdrew shuddering 
from his arms, for she thought of his treason and the 
ruin it had brought upon Spain. Her wretchedness 
increased after her return to her native countrj-, until 
it rose to a degree of frenzy. One day when she was 
walking with her parents in the garden of their palace, 
she entered a tower and, having barred the door, 
ascended to the battlements. Thence she called to 
them in piercing accents, expressive of her insupporta- 



44 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN. 

ble anguish, and desperate determination: 'Let this 
city,' said she, 'be called Malacca, in memorial of the 
most wretched of women, who therein put an end to 
her days.' So saying, she threw herself headlong from 
the tower and was dashed to pieces. The city," adds 
the ancient chronicler, ''received the name thus given 
it, though afterward softened to Malaga, which it still 
retains in memory of the tragical end of Florinda. 
The Countess Frandina abandoned this scene of wx>e an 
returned to Ceuta, accompanied by her infant son. She 
took with her the remains of her unfortunate daughter, 
and gave them honorable sepulture in a mausoleum 
of the chapel belonging to the citadel. Count Julian 
departed for Carthagena, where he remained plunged 
in horror at this doleful event." 

But the terrible retribution was not to end here. 
Anticipating somewhat the progress of events, we may 
note that as successor to Musa, the Emir in Africa was 
one Abdalasis, who, becoming suspicious of Count 
Julian and his family, resolved to destroy them root 
and branch. He stormed and took the castle of Ceuta, 
cast headlong from the battlements the infant son of 
the count and had his wife stoned to death. The count 
himself* for a long while escaped those sent in pursuit 
of him, but at last fell into their hands and was be- 
headed, or put to death with tortures. 

Bishop Oppas, brother to King Witiza, who had 
occupied the throne before King Roderick, though he 
and his nephews, the sons of Witiza, had been granted 
immense estates, was eventually suspected by the Arabs 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 45 

of treason, imprisoned in a mountain fortress and died 
in fetters. The two sons of Witiza, his nephews, were 
also put to death; and thus did these traitors to Spain 
expiate their treason. 

These events occurred long after Spain itself had 
been overrun by the African invaders; meanwhile the 
very face of the land was being changed by these fierce 
Moslems, for they razed cities and massacred people, 
scattered repeatedly the forces hastily gathered to 
oppose them, and soon made themselves complete mas- 
ters of the entire peninsula except the more mountainous 
portions, to which a remnant of the Goths retreated, 
and where they stood at bay. After a dominion ex- 
tending over three hunded years the Gothic supremacy 
was shattered. It had lasted from about the year 410 
to 711, the year in which this lamentable invasion 
occurred; three centuries in fact, and a new people 
(that is, new to this part of the world), was to occupy 
the land that for nearly nine hundred years had been 
in possession of the Romans and the Western Goths. 

It is the belief of impartial historians that Musa the 
Emir had not really intended the conquest of Spain, 
but merely an invasion for purposes of ravage, and so 
had ordered Tarik the One-eyed to return to Africa 
with what plunder he could collect in his raid, and not 
tempt fate by open battle. But the overwhelming 
successes the latter had experienced tempted him to dis- 
obey these orders, even if he had not deliberately planned 
to do so in advance, as instanced by the destruction of 
his fleet of transports. He had secured plunder enough 




46 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 

to satisfy even the desires of an Arab, for so many years 
accustomed to ravage and pillage; but the warlike 
spirit was too strong in the old chieftain to allow him to 
turn back and retreat upon Africa again, with the pros- 
pect before him of unlimited conquest and the illimita- 
ble spread of the "only true faith." He kept on after 
the fleeing Goths until he had reached and stormed 
their capital, Toledo ; had passed on the way and thrown 
a force of occupation into the famous city of Cordova, 
and was still in hot pursuit of the foe, when orders 
from Musa reached him and arrested his victorious 
career. He sullenly withdrew his troops from the pur- 
suit and awaited further commands from Musa, who, 
when he had himself come into Spain and noted the 
extent of his subordinate's conquest, was overcome with 
anger. To him had been due, he thought, the rich re- 
wards of this invasion, and not to a comparatively un- 
known fighter in the ranks. But he paused to gather up 
what his lieutenant had left behind him when he had 
pursued a straight course northwardly after the flying 
foe. For instance, Tarik had passed at one side the 
rich city of Seville, on the banks of the Guadalquivir, 
and on the other the fruitful territory now pertaining 
to Granada. These Musa, having once entered the 
land, reached out his greedy hands to grasp, and a long 
time elapsed before he could reach and summon Tarik 
to account. But even then time had not cooled his 
resentment, and he reproached the grim warrior, when 
at last he had come into his presence, with having dis- 
obeyed his orders. Having full powers over the con- 



THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 47 

quered territories in Africa and Spain, Musa made the 
fatal mistake of supposing that whatever he declared 
would prevail with the Caliph at Damascus, who, even 
though at a distance of thousands of miles from the 
scenes of warfare, yet exerted supreme power over his 
fanatical followers. A commander of ordinary nobility 
of soul would have congratulated, rather than have repri- 
manded a soldier of Tank's great ability; but Musa 
was to receive his reward in due time. As he did to 
Tarik, even so, and more, the Caliph did to him. The 
quarrel coming to the Caliph's ears, he at once de- 
spatched swift couriers to summon Musa and Tarik 
into his presence at Damascus. Each prepared to obey 
that order, for neither dared to disobey. Musa traveled 
leisurely and in state, as became the conqueror of a 
kingdom ; grim old Tarik hastened to Damascus with 
a small retinue of warriors as tough and agile as him- 
self, and when his former commander had arrived, he 
had seen and told his story to the Caliph; so that 
Musa's first reception presaged his doom. By the 
Caliph's orders he was degraded of all rank and de- 
prived of every honor which he had acquired ; and his 
sons, whom he had left in command as emirs in his 
absence, were, by the Caliph's orders, secretly slain. 

Tarik el Tuerto, on the contrary, being a servant 
too valuable, too faithful to his master to deprive of 
rank or power, was ordered back to the field of glory, 
there to fight again the battles of Mahomet against the 
unbelievers. As a last indignity, it is said, the Caliph 
had Musa's favorite son beheaded, and the embalmed 



48 THE MAHOMETANS IN SPAIN 

head brought to his court, where it was shown to the 
sorrowing father, surrounded by reviling courtiers. In 
anguish too deep for words the unhappy Musa slunk 
from court, and soon ended his life in poverty and 
great distress. 



THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 49 



IV. 
THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 

Even the Pyrenees did not suffice to roll back that 
flood of African Mahometans which had broken 
through the coast barrier of Spain. Months and years 
were as nothing to these determined, fanatical adherents 
of the Prophet ; for they were deeply imbued with the 
energy and delusions of their great chief. Like a tidal 
wave from the Mediterranean they inundated all Spain 
and spread themselves over the peninsula. Then, forc- 
ing the passes of the Pyrenees, they assailed the towns 
and cities of France; but here they were met and 
stopped by the resistless might of Charles Martel. 
The great "Hammer" of France, Charles Martel, never 
performed a greater service for Christendom than when 
he imposed his hardy veterans as a barrier against the 
surging sea of Moslems from Africa and Spain. They 
had overrun all Aquitania and were triumphantly ad- 
vancing to the Loire, when Charles assembled his 
armies to oppose their progress in the year 732, just 
twenty-one years after the landing in Spain. The bat- 
tle was protracted, bloody and desperate; but the 
Moslems lost their great leader, Abderrhaman, and in 
the end were disastrously defeated. Five years later, 




50 THE MOSLEM 1NUNDATK 

in 737, the invincible Charles again defeated an army 
of Saracens, and then they sullenly retreated, back 
hind the Pyrenees, where they were safe from pursuit. 
"But for these great victories," says the historian 
Gibbon, "perhaps the interpretation of the Koran would 
now be taught in the schools of Oxford, and her pulpits 
might demonstrate to an uncircumcised people the 
Hanctity and truth of the revelation of Mahomet." 
Great indeed was the peril from which Europe was 
saved by the French king, and thankful were the 
Christian peoples for their deliverance. An Oriental 
people, with an inborn love of the sun and of lands 
bathed in sunshine, the Mahometans gladly settled in 
Spain, the southern portions of which rejoice in a per- 
petual summer. Although they captured and for a 
long time held strongholds and cities in the north, such 
as Toledo and Saragossa, Barcelona and Valladolid, 
yet they found their land of promise in the south, in 
the fair country of Andalusia, chiefly, and along the 
Guadalquivir and the southern coast. After many 
years of unsettled wanderings, they finally fixed their 
capital at Cordova and here arose the seat of learning, 
the center of Oriental refinement, that, in the words of 
the talented writer, "kept alive the light of learning dur- 
ing the Dark Ages, when it was all but extinguished 
elsewhere." Here it was that, according to Prescott, 
"the influence of the Spanish Arabs was discernible; 
not so much in the amount of knowledge, as in the im- 
pulse which they communicated to the long-dormant 
energies of Europe. Their invasion was coeval with 









THE MOSLEM IXUSPA 11 

the commencement of that long night of darkness 
which divides the ancient from the modern world." 

It was more because of their separation from the 
caliphate of Damascus, and their freedom from the 
bigoted restrictions emanating constantly from the 
Orient, that the Moslems of Spain came finally to sur- 
pass their prototypes in the far East, Energy and am- 
bition they had brought with thorn, along with super- 
stition and ignorance; but the dissensions at the center 
o( their faith and influence soon caused them to break 
away from their traditions and to establish what bo 

came an independent empire or caliphate. The two 
leading sects of the Mahometans were known as the 
Abbasides and the Omiades, so called from their puta- 
tive leaders. At the time of the invasion the Abbasides 
were in the ascendant, but they bad murdered or exiled 
all their opposing Omiades, and were bent upon their 
extermination. But one of the princes of the defeated 
Beet, called Abdorrhaman, escaped to Egypt and to 
North Africa, where he became a royal guest among 
the devoted Kodouins. After the dissensions caused by 

the quarrel between Musaand Tarik had spread to their 
respective adherents, the final severance came ;»s be- 
tween the Oriental and the Spanish Moslems. The 
Latter, hearing that a prince of the Omiades was ^wan 
dering as a fugitive with the African Bedouins, sent 

over for him U> oomo and be their ruler, and thus was 

established the long lino of Spanish caliphs, which 
endured for quite three oetituries, and cast a reflected 

glory upon Mahometan ism which the Oriental line (save 







52 THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 

in the person of two or three caliphs) did not deserve. 
Material evidences of the vast works, not only begun 
but accomplished by Abderrhaman and his successors 
are plentiful to-day, in Cordova, particularly. One of 
the most striking structures, one that claims the atten- 
tion of the traveler as he approaches this city, founded 
by the Romans and completed by the Moslems, is the 
great bridge spanning the Guadalquivir, which is at- 
tributed to Octavius Augustus and is said to be— at 
least its foundations— not less than a thousand years old. 
But Cordova's most glorious structure— and perhaps 
the most magnificent to be found in Spain— is the great 
mosque, which was begun by Abderrhaman in or about 
the year of our era 786, near the beginning of his rule 
as Caliph of the West. It was soon after he was firmly 
fixed upon his throne that he conceived the idea of 
building here such a structure "that all the world 
should come to wonder at it." He sent, indeed, to 
every part of the world with which he was in com- 
munication for columns with which to adorn this tem- 
ple erected to the glory of Mahomet and the triumph of 
the western Moslems. And not only from Moslem 
countries, but from Christian as well, came to him 
material for his mosque. From France and from 
Africa, from Tarragona on the east coast of Spain, 
from Leo the Emperor of Constantinople ; from Damas- 
cus and from the ruins cf ill-fated Carthage. And 
again, as the mosque is said to have been erected on 
the site of a Roman temple to Janus, it is very proba- 
ble that this building, raised for the glorification of 




nap* : ' 



THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 53 



Islamism, was enriched by contributions from the 
heathen temple. The Arabian historians tell us there 
were originally more than twelve hundred monolithic 
columns, and even at the present time there are more 
than a thousand still standing as monuments to the 
indefatigable energy of Abderrhaman and his archi- 
tects; more than a thousand pillars of jasper, verd 
antique and porphyry, forming a veritable petrified 
forest, such as only the writer of an "Arabian Nights" 
could invent, or dream of creating. 

These thousand columns give us impressions of vast- 
ness, of grandeur, and an idea of the infinite concep- 
tions in the minds of those ancient builders, whose 
dreams were of beauty and originality. There are 
nineteen longitudinal and thirty-three transversal aisles 
in this vast mosque, the roof of which, only forty feet 
high, covers more than four acres, supported by double 
arches above the columns, some of these arches so con- 
structed as to convey the effect of fluted, interlaced 
ribbons. 

Charles V., many years later, sought to ''improve" 
this great conception by intruding a capilla mayor, or 
great chapel, and a coro, or choir stalls, in the center 
of the edifice. At least, he is sometimes credited with 
this intrusion ; but again he is said to have declared 
when he saw it: "This is onl}~ what might have been 
built anywhere else, but you have destroyed what was 
unique in the world." Which was perfectly true, 
whether he said it or not. Even now, with the view 
adown those wondrous naves obstructed by this chapel 



54 THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 

and choir we may imagine what a glorious effect was 
produced upon the beholder, when one could look 
through these vistas of columns, from one end of the 
vast mosque to the other. "Well may this grand 
mosque have served as the Mecca for all Spanish 
Moslems, and to have ranked in sanctity as second only 
to the sacred Kaaba of the original Mecca. 

We may find here now the ancient maksurah where 
the gold and silver vessels were kept, and the immense 
Koran, so heavy that two men could hardly lift it. 
The "holy of holies,' • also, or the ceca, where is the 
mihrab, or Moslem sanctuary, exquisitely arched and 
sculptured, which is at the side of the mosque toward 
Mecca, as in every mosque throughout Spain and 
Algiers — o? wherever a place of worship has been 
erected by the Mahometans. 

With this mosque as a groundwork there have been 
many inscriptions painted, in Cufic and African, while 
the mosaics and interlaced arches are said to l>e 
Romano-Byzantine, made by a Greek artist and archi- 
tect sent by Leo of Constantinople, in the year 965, 
who taught the Moors the art. 

This is but one of the many beautiful structures 
erected by the Moors in Spain, showing how art and 
architecture blossomed here, when freed from the in- 
fluence of tyrannical caliphs in the far East. Cordova 
became a rival to the wonderful Bagdad, with its hun- 
dreds of bridges, palaces, fountains and mosques. 
Here gathered all the learning and culture; schools 
were founded, also universities; astronomy, that purely 



THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 55 

Oriental science, was studied with avidity, mathematics 
gained greatly from the investigations of the scholars of 
Cordova, and names arose here which even the cen- 
turies that have succeeded have allowed to live. The 
pre-eminence of Cordova was maintained through a 
long line of emirs and caliphs some two dozen in num- 
ber, the bare enumeration of whose names would be 
unprofitable. One of the greatest who ruled the city, 
and consequently the land, was never recognized as 
caliph, but in the name of his master was virtual ruler 
over all ; a vizier of obscure birth who arrogated to him- 
self the title of "Almanzor Billah — the Victorious." 
To narrate his accomplishments and victories would be 
to anticipate the proper course of events; but he it was 
who, long years after the great mosque was built, hung 
therein as lamps the bells of holy Compostello's shrine 
about the end of the thousandth year of our era. 

Cordova is but one example of revived art and 
science, which was brought about by the advent of the 
Moors, or Arabs, into Spain. In truth, "the coming 
of the Moors, though destined to be the occasion of long 
and destructive warfare, was nevertheless destined to 
be productive of much that was to the permanent bene- 
fit of Spain and its people. They settled the wasted 
lands by planting colonies of agriculturists from Mauri- 
tania (the ancient home of the Moors in Africa) and 
furthered commerce by the introduction (and protec- 
tion) of the Jews. ' ' 

The Moorish taste for literature and the arts and 
their splendid talent for architecture are proverbial; 




- 

56 THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 

and under their rule the land was adorned with monu- 
ments of the builder's art, which excite admiration 
even at the present day. Their manners, too, though 
their lives were simple and unaffected, were more 
polished than those of the Goths, and their love of 
music and poetry is supposed to have determined the 
character of the national airs and the rhymes and bal- 
lads peculiar to the peninsula. 

The improvement in the condition of the country be- 
came more marked when the Omiad caliphs were 
seated upon the throne, though much injury was done 
by the unseemly differences which, even now, con- 
tinued to exist and to trouble the land. Education re- 
ceived a liberal share of attention, and public schools, 
attached to the mosques were established in every city/ 

Nor were the sterner arts of life neglected. Agricul- 
tural operations were carried on with the greatest skill; 
shipbuilding was much improved, and commerce 
greatly extended; while the maufacture of sword- 
blades — for which Toledo was so long and universally 
celebrated, and the manufacture of Morocco leather, 
was carried on to a lucrative extent. Thus the penin- 
sula only needed an absence of internal and external 
warfare to flourish nobly. 

Unfortunately, the Moors were not only soon beset 
by external enemies, in the persons of the revivified 
Goths, who had gradually recovered their strength and 
were becoming numerous in the northern mountains, 
but they were divided against each other, on matters of 
faith and government. As we have seen, they included 



within their ranks Moslems from Arabia, Syria, Egypt, 
and North Africa. Like all devotees to a new religion, 
the latest converts were the most fanatical but also the 
most difficult to rule. " There is but one God, and 
Mahomet is his prophet;" on that all agreed; but as to 
the interpretation of the minor matters of faith they 
were divided. To the Arab Omiad is ascribed the 
advance in culture and education; to the African 
Bedouin or Berber most of the victories were due. 
Thus while the latter fought the battle and finally 
accumulated the spoils of victories, the former in- 
dulged in enervating luxuries, albeit the highest ex- 
ponent of Moorish culture. Then the usual ending 
came to d} 7 nasties enfeebled by long indulgence in 
luxurious modes of living, and the Omiades were 
eventually obliterated. Religious differences prompted 
one of the sects to call to its aid a fierce and ruthless 
warrior-king of Morocco named Yussef, who indeed 
aided his friends at first, but eventually turned upon 
them and established himself in power, laying the 
foundations for the Almoravrd dynasty. Under him 
and his successors the learning and even the civiliza- 
tion of the Cordovan caliphate was threatened with ex- 
tinction and the city itself became the abode of savages 
and warriors. 

The Almoravides were overthrown about fifty years 
after their elevation to power, but by a sect hardly less 
rude and ignorant, and certainly not less fanatical than 
they : that of the Almohades, founded by one Mahomet 
the Lamplighter, a native of Cordova, but who had 









retired as a hermit to the mountains of Morocco. 
Mahomet the Lamplighter died before the vast army of 
his followers had crossed the Strait, and his compan- 
ion, one Abdelmummen, had the doubtful honor of over- 
throwing his rival sect and seating himself on the 
throne of Spain as caliph of the faithful. 

He died in the year 1162, and was succeeded by a 
son, Cid Yussef, whose great claim to distinction is as 
the builder of the great mosque of Seville, the bridge 
that crosses the Guadalquivir at that city's site, and 
the immense aqueduct, the arches of which stand now, 
a striking memorial of his greatness. 

But while the Moslems were warring among them- 
selves, and at the same time receiving general accessions 
from the continually oncoming hordes from Africa, 
they were also being combated by the ever increasing 
power of the Christians of the North. Wave after 
wave, flood after flood, of Moslem invaders came over 
from Africa, yet to be eventually checked in their 
careers of conquest at the feet of the northern moun- 
tains, sometimes the Cantabrians, sometimes the Pyre- 
nees. In the year 778 the Moslem forces in the north 
of Spain received a severe punishment from Charles 
the Great, Charlemagne of France, who, lured by the 
prospect of cities to be taken and vast plunder to be 
had, poured through the passes of the Pyrenees with a 
tumultuous army and for a time was successful in 
ravaging a portion of the Moorish territory. Some 
historians, however, declare that it was not as an 
enemy of the Moors, but to aid one sect or band of 




- 

THE MOSLEM INUNDATION. 59 

rebels against the rule of one of the caliphs. What- 
ever the cause of this invasion, the facts are that 
Charlemagne invaded the north country of Spain, that 
he took Pampeluna and razed its walls, and advanced 
as far as Saragossa (then in possession of the Saracens), 
but then, recalled to France by an uprising of his 
Saxon subjects, suddenly turned about and in effect re- 
treated through the Pass of Roncesvalles. Then it 
was he suffered a terrible defeat, by his rearguard 
being set upon, by the Basques and all but d3stroyed. 

1 ' The day of Roncesvalles was a dismal day for you, 
Ye men of France, for there the lance of King Charles was 

broke in two ; 
Ye well may curse that rueful field, for many a noble peer 
In fray or fight the dust did bite beneath Bernardo's spear." 






60 THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 




THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 

This campaign of Charlemagne against the north of 
Spa-in was the only one he conducted through the Pyre- 
nees, and according to the chroniclers of his time it was 
disastrous enough to tempt him back for reprisals. 
For, in the Pass of Roncesvalles, "as the army of Char- 
lemagne was marching in extended order through the 
narrow pass, the Gascons (Basques) who, profiting by 
the denseness of the woods that abound there, had 
posted themselves in ambush on the heights, rushing 
upon those guarding the rear, hurled them into the 
valley beneath, and there slew them to a man; and 
having seized the baggage dispersed in all directions, 
so that there was no finding them to take vengeance 
upon them." 

It has been charged that King Alfonso II. of Spain, 
founder of the cities of Compostello and Oviedo, him- 
self invited Charlemagne over the border; but after- 
ward repented and allied himself with the Saracens to 
encompass his defeat, fearing his strength. But, what 
ever the truth of the matter, the occasion of his inva- 
sion and his defeat at Roncesvalles was early seized 
upon by the ballad and romance writers for lauding 






THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 61 

the deeds of two men of that time, who performed great 
and doughty acts with their swords. One of these was 
the semi-mythical Roland, or Ronaldo, who fought 
with Charlemagne's rearguard in the Pass, falling 
covered with honorable wounds; and the other was one 
Bernardo del Carpio, perhaps equally mythical, who 
was the hero on the Spanish side. 

Bernardo del Carpio may have been merely the em- 
bodiment or individualization of the heroic deeds cf 
many men of that time, when all men were brave and 
lusty fighters. But at all events^around him cluster 
many_ legends of the age in which he is said to have 
lived. It appears from the legend, that Alfonso was 
persuaded from his alliance with Charlemagne by the 
nobility of his court, led by Bernardo del Carpio, whose 
father the king even then held a prisoner, because of an 
intrigue with Dona Ximena, a virtuous princess, who 
became the mother of this same Bernardo. He aroused 
the king to a sense of duty, and then : 

" With three thousand men of Leon, from the city Bernard 
goes, 
To protect the soil Hispanian from the spear of Frankish foes ; 
From the city which is planted in the midst between the seas, 
To preserve the name and glory of old Pelayo's victories. 

11 The peasant hears upon his field the trumpet of the knight; 
He quits his team for spear and shield, and garniture of might; 
The shepherd hears it 'mid the mist— he flingeth down his 

crook, 
And rushes from the mountain like the tempest-troubled brook. 




6 -> TEE NOBTHEBN KINGDOMS. 

" As through the glen his spears did gleam, these soldiers from 

the hills, 
They swelled his host as mountain stream receives the roaring 

rills. 

They round his banner flocked in scorn of haughty Charle- 
magne, 

And thus upon their swords are sworn the faithful sons of 

Spain. " 

Romance and poetry aside, it was thus the sons of 
Spain did flock to the banners of their respective kings 
or lords, whether the foe were Saracen or Christian. 
Although the Moslems had driven the Goths from the 
southern plains and coast towns, yet they had left a 
few small bands in the almost inaccessible mountains 
of the north whom they had considered too pitiful to 
hunt out and destroy. They had good reason to regret 
this omission on their part when, before the end of the 
century in which they had invaded Spain, these isolated 
bands of Goths had become nuclei around which 
gathered the brave and hardy veterans, as well as the 
youth of the rent and devastated kingdom. Not many 
years had elapsed, in fact, ere they boasted of a king, 
Pelayo, who, though he may have lived in a cave and 
dressed in shaggy skins stripped from wolf or sheep, yet 
was of kingly lineage and presence. Under him, and 
under his immediately successors the Goths grew 
rapidly into something like a coherency of peoples, with 
villages and hamlets, at first, then with towns and 
growing cities. Thus arose, finally, the provinces or 
kingdoms of Asturias, Leon, Galicia, Navarre, Aragon, 






THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 63 

Catalonia, which covered the country fairly well from 
the Atlantic to the Mediterranean, but throughout the 
north, only. Petty kings also arose, a ruler for each 
province or kingdom, and as is almost always the case 
with a multiplicity of rulers, they frequently clashed 
among themselves. When, however, there seemed an 
opportunity for uniting against the Saracen, they 
always did so, with disastrous effect to the intruder. It 
was in this manner that the Moslem finally held but 
few cities in the north of Spain, and soon relaxed his 
hold of these. But it took years, even centuries, to dis- 
lodge him altogether and it was not until about the 
year 1082 that the city of Toledo fell a prize to Alfonso 
VI., the son of Ferdinand the Great. This old city had 
been long in Moslem possession, or for more than three 
hundred years; but at last became once again a Gothic 
capital. 

The chronicles of the time are replete with individual 
deeds of valor and with the names of petty kings who 
attained to great honor and distinction ; but as the 
object of this history is to show more the means by 
which Spain became the land of the heterogeneous 
population it now holds, and the abode of valiant 
though ignorant peoples, we will not stop to scan too 
closely the pages in which are recorded their individual 
acts. The Moors had won nearly all the battles until 
the opening years of the eleventh century, but when, by 
losing the great fight of Catalanazor, Almansor of 
Cordova lost also his prestige and his life, the tide 
seems to have changed. 




04 THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 

The loss of Toledo was the last straw for the Moors 
to bear with equanimity, and, as has already been 
noted, they invited over from Africa the barbarian 
otnperor of Morocco, Yussef, the bigoted Bedouin, who 
gladly accepted the opportunity for adding another 
kingdom to his list, and soon sent an invitation to 
Alfonso to become a Mahometan or to prepare for 
defeat in battle. Alfonso chose the gage of battle, and 
in October, 1086, met Yussef on the plains of Zallaca 
and suffered most disastrous defeat. During his long 
life he fought more than forty battles, and met defeat 
but twice, so it may not have been presumptuous in 
him to accept Yussef's challenge. But these last 
Bedouins to invade the peninsula were of the same 
temper as the first and at the outset were invincible. 
The audacity and insolence of the Moors now kn* sv no 
bounds; Yussef even demanded the restoration of the 
ancient tribute of maidens which old King Ramiro, 
more than two hundred years before, bad successfully 
fought to abolish. This ''maiden tribute" is mentioned 
by one of the chroniclers in the following language: 
"Ramiro had not been many months seated on the 
throne when Abderrahman, the Moorish king, the sec- 
ond of that name, sent a formal embassy to demand 
payment of an odious and ignominious tribute, which 
had been agreed to in the days of former and weaker 
prince*, but which, it would seem, had not been 
exacted by the Moors while such men as Bernardo del 
Carpio and Alfonso the Great headed the Christian 
forces. This tribute was a hundred virgins every year. 



THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS, 65 

King Ramiro refused compliance and as a consequence 
was forced to march to meet the army of Abderrahman. 
The battle lasted for two days, and on the first the 
Saracen cavalry had nearly accomplished a complete 
victory, when the approach of night separated the com- 
batants. 

During the night (says tradition), the good St. Iago 
stood in a vision before the king, and promised to 
be with him the next morning in the field. Accord- 
ingly, the warlike apostle made his appearance, 
mounted on a milk-white charger and armed head to 
foot in radiant mail, like a true knight. It is hardly 
necessary to say that the Moors sustained a signal 
defeat, and the 'maiden tribute' was never afterward 
paid, although often enough demanded." In this 
version of the abandonment of tribute and story of celes- 
tial assistance from St. James, we see how inextricably 
mingled are truth and fiction in the history of Spain. 
But we narrate this incident, not as a bit of history, 
but as showing the romantic nature of the legends and 
the origin of many of the ballads of early Spain. First, 
the poet makes use of the legend as food for his muse; 
then the ecclesiastic seizes upon it to strengthen his 
hold upon a superstitious people. Here is what the 
poet says : 



" Ye noble King Ramiro within his chamber sate 
One day, with all his barons, in council and debate, 
When, without leave or guidance of usher or of groom, 
There came a comely maiden into the council room. 







66 THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 



" She was a comely maiden — she was surpassing fair: 
All loose upon her shoulders hung down her golden hair ; 
From head to foot her garments were white as white may be, 
And while they gazed in silence, thus in their midst spake she : 

' ' ' Sir King, I crave your pardon if I have done amiss, 
In venturing before ye at such an hour as this ; 
But I will tell my story, and when my words ye hear, 
I look for praise and honor, and no rebuke I fear. 

" ■' I know not if I'm bounden to call thee by the name 
Of Christian, King Ramiro ; for, though thou dost not claim 
A heathen realm's allegiance, a heathen sure thou art — 
Beneath a Spaniard's mantle thou hid'st a Moorish heart. 

" ' For he who gives the Moor-king a hundred maids of Spain, 
Each year when in its season tho day comes round again ; 
If he be not a heathen, he swells the heathen's train — 
'Twere better burn a kingdom than suffer such disdain.' " 

" The king called God to witness that, gome there weal or woe, 
Thenceforth no maiden tribute from out Castile should go; 
1 At least I will do battle on God our Saviou's foe, 
And die beneath my banner before I see it so!' 

" A cry went through the mountains when the proud Moor drew 
near, 
And trooping to Ramiro came every Christian spear ; 
The blessed Saint Iago, they called upon his name : 
That day began our freedom, and wiped away our shame !" 

As to the claim of King Ramiro that St. Iago, or St. 
James, aided him in that memorable battle with the 
Moors, when it is held that he slew sixty thousand of 
the enemy, there is nothing unique in either the claim 
or the occasion, for, according to the chronicles he has 



THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 67 

assisted the Spaniards on no less than thirty -eight 
different battlefields; though, as to that matter, this 
may have been the first time he appeared to ariyied 
hosts in Spain. 

Even in Mexico, seven centuries after, Cortes claimed 
that he was assisted by an apparition of St. James on 
his white charger, or Bernal Diaz made the claim for 
him, which is about the same. 

The origin of the legend of St. James, and the reason 
the good apostle's name has been adopted as a Spanish 
war-cry, is this: One day, after his decapitation, he 
went into a boat and set off for Spain, on his way pass- 
ing a port in Portugal where the wedding festivities of 
a noble's daughter were in progress. One of the 
amusements of the occasion was the game of "throw- 
ing the cane," which took place at the seashore, and as 
the bridegroom was about to take part, to the consterna- 
tion of his guests his horse suddenly plunged into the 
waves, only emerging when he reached the boat con- 
taining the saint. He again disappeared, and when he 
landed was found covered, as was his rider, with 
scallop shells. The groom said that St. James had 
promised him that he would take good care of any one 
who should visit his shrine and who should wear a 
scallop shell, in token of having been true to his vows. 
After leaving directions how and where he would be 
found, he again set off and when within a few miles of 
the present shrine of Santiago he lay down on a stone, 
which wrapped itself around him like a cloak, and was 
discovered there eight hundred years afterward and 



S 






removed to SaDtiago. Thus arose the church of San- 
tiago, founded by pious pilgrims to this shrine, each one 
of whom wore as a distinguishing badge a scallop shell, 
like the shells found, even to-day, petrified and in 
abundance in that locality. During the Middle Ages 
a pilgrimage to this shrine was considered as indispen- 
sable to all good Christian knights as one to Mecca by 
all true believers. To Englishmen alone, it is on 
record, no less than twenty-four hundred licenses were 
granted in year 1434, only, and by papal encyclicals 
those who dared sell shells to other pilgrims than those 
to Santiago, were in danger of excommunication. 
Corn and wine were always paid as tribute by the kings 
to the priests of Compostello — or the " Field of the 
Star," where it is a tradition St. James first appeared 
after his petrifaction. 

There was another occasion on which St. Iago is said 
to have appeared with great eclat, and that is at a 
period somewhat later than the time of King Ramiro, 
when a Moorish host had come up to Castile from 
Cordova in such numbers that the vast plains were 
completely covered as with swarms of locusts. 

A celebrated hero of Castile, Count Fernan Gon- 
zalez, seeing that the unaided arm of flesh could not 
prevail against such a host, with great perspicacity at 
once retired to a hermitage on the mountain above the 
river Arlanza, and prayed lustily for aid. In the bat- 
tle that immediately ensued, and just when the tide was 
turning against the Christians, the glorious apostle, 
San Iago, appeared in the heavens, accompanied by a 



THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. G9 

great company of angels, innumerable hosts of them, 
each company displaying a banner with a red cross on it. 
There is no rieed of further remarks, for this was all the 
Spaniards wanted, and they were so inspirited by the 
appearance of their heavenly allies that they drove the 
Moors before them in confusion, and with immense 
slaughter. Indeed, if we may believe the ancient chron- 
iclers of those days miracles were as plenty as black- 
berries, but they so invariably worked in favor of the 
Spaniards that one's sympathies cannot but be enlisted 
in behalf of the Moors, against whom they so invaria- 
bly and disastrously operated ; exen though the latter 
always fought stoutly, giving the Spaniards as good as 
they sent. Now there was another instance — that which 
relates to the devout Castilian, Pascual Vivas, who, 
on the eve of a certain battle, entered a chapel to pra} r . 
He continued so long at mass that the battle, in fact, 
went on without him, and when he appeared outside he 
had the great mortification of meeting his comrades re- 
turning victorious as he rode down the hill. 

But it appears that the Holy Virgin was so pleased 
at his devoutness that she had made it seem that he, 
that same Pascual Vivas, had been all along in the 
thick of the fight, as his armor was indented, and his 
charger covered with marks of the fray; and his com- 
panions saluted him enthusiastically as the real hero of 
the fight. It was explained (} r ears after, by the good Pas- 
cual Vivas himself, and so of course it must be true) 
that his effigy had taken his place in the ranks and bad 
enacted his part to perfection. This is but one example 



70 THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 

of the real and unaffected modesty of those worthies 
who battle against the Moors; for, as in this case, they 
were often willing that their counterfeit presentiment 
should have all the glory, that their immaculate mis- 
tress might thereby be exalted. 

There is, probably, no city of Spain so typical of 
these early times when the Castilians were seeking to 
rid themselves of the Moorish domination in the North, 
as the ancient city of Burgos. Let us halt a moment 
in our search for heroes, and examine this erstwhile 
residence of the most famous of their kind. Aside 
from its glorious cathedral, which is of later date than 
the time of which we are writing, there are numerous 
structures which carry us back to those troublous times 
of some eight or nine hundred years ago. The grim old 
castle still stands there in which Count Fernan Gon- 
zalez once imprisoned his rival, Don Garcia, about the 
year 958, and in which Alfonso VI. of Leon, was con- 
fined by the Cid Capmeador; where King Ferdinand 
the "Saint" received with honors the daughter of the 
Moorish king of Toledo, St. Casilda, who became a con- 
vert to Christianity; and where, later on, King Edward 
I., of England, was married to Eleanor of Castile. 
This historic castle still stands, but in ruins, above the 
cathedral, on the hill overlooking the city; for it was 
blown up by the French army early in this century. 

There are other structures, also, in this old Castilian 
city on the river Arlonzon, that remind us of the 
ancient worthies of Burgos, two of these being the town 
hall, and the great city gate of Santa Maria. This 



THE NORTHERN' KINGDOMS. 71 

latter, the "Areo de Santa Maria," is first observed as 
one approaches the city from the railroad station, rising 
above and at the city end of a fine stone bridge which 
here crosses the river. This is really a relic of the 
Middle Ages, with its flanking bastions of the city 
walls, its turrets and its battlements, from which many 
a cross-bowman has shot his bolts at the enemy ap- 
proaching. An image of the protecting Virgin stands 
over the great archway, with statues of heroes on 
either side, and behind it, not far away, rise the beauti- 
ful Gothic towers of the old cathedral. 

Butin the Town Hall we find most impressive evi- 
dences of the ancient heroes, the founders of this cit} r , 
the earliest Counts of Castile, such as authentic por- 
traits, etc. Here are preserved the portraits of Lain 
Calvo and Nuno Rasuro, and the Roman or Gothic 
chair in which they and other judges were once seated, 
more than a thousand years ago. In one room devoted 
to his memory are relics of that redoubtable hero of the 
eleventh century, the Cid Campeador, the most con- 
spicuous being the veritable bones of himself and his 
devoted wife, the lovely Ximena. The bones of the 
Cid, of which several of the larger yet remain, are con- 
tained in a walnut casket; but all that is now visible 
of his wife are held in a black glass bottle. The Span- 
iards are especially devoted to such relics as these, and 
are never satisfied unless they can dig up the relics of 
their saints and heroes, great commanders and heroines, 
and exhibit their grewsome remains in public. This 
fad was probably started in the time of King Philip 



72 THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 

II., whose gloomy Escurial is one vast charnel house of 
sacred "relics." 

But, assuming these remains to be authentic — as 
they doubtless are — it is indeed a pity they should be 
thus paraded. Almost any other bones would do as 
well to bring back the presence of the renowned Cam- 
peador, and almost any pinch of dust recall the devoted- 
ness of his faithful wife. It had been better to have 
ljft them at rest in the tomb in which it was his wish 
he and his wife should rest forever. This same tomb, 
beautifully sculptured, but now empty, to which the 
great warrior was borne on his war-horse, and* where 
he and his wife rested many years, .may yet be seen, in 
the convent of San Pedro de la Dena, a few miles dis- 
tant from the city. 

He died, as we know, while nobly defending the city 
of Valencia from the assaults of the Moors, and his de- 
voted Ximena, after continuing the defense successfully 
and beating off the enemy, had his corpse mounted on 
his caparisoned charger and taken to Burgos, herself 
following after. This was in the year of our Lord 
1099, and for many years thereafter the embalmed body 
of the invincible Cid Campeador sat erect beside the 
high altar of the church in Burgos, and only at the 
death of his wife was he interred in the tomb. 

The site of the Cid's house is to-day indicated here 
by three obelisks, not far distant from an arch erected 
to the memory of the great judge and warrior Fernan 
Gonzalez. Like Count Fernan, the Cid was a constant 







THE NORTHERN KINGDOMS. 73 

of terror to the Moors, and ever ready to leap 
astride bis war-horse and dash forward to the fray. 

Leaving for the moment these heroes of Spain's his- 
tory, let us examine a few other of the buildings in 
Burgos which bring to mind their companions at arms. 
The general aspect of the city is ancient enough to war- 
rant us in imagining its streets repeopled with gallant 
cavaliers in mail and soldiers in armor. Even the very 
beggars of Burgos — and they are numerous and persis- 
tent — wear helmet-like headdresses patterned after 
the helmets of those famous counts of Castile, whose 
history and deeds they all known by heart. More than 
this: some of those very mendicants are descended from 
knights of high degree, and some of them still treasure 
in their h uts their escudos, or coats-of-arms, with quar- 
terings that indicate royal appreciation in the olden 
times. Throughout all Spain, in fact, the various cos- 
tumes preserve to us helmets and armor of ancient days. 
For example, the "coletos" are the ancient doublets, 
the "monteras" are the helmets, and the "abarcas" 
(Arabic alpargatas) are the gaiters such as were worn 
by soldiers when Granada was besieged and taken by 
the army of King Ferdinand. 






74 HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 



VI. 

HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 

The Spaniards have a saying: "If God were not 
God, he would make himself King of Spain, with the 
King of France for his cook." In this sacreligious 
proverb is epitomized the Spanish arrogance and levity. 
Educated in the midst of romantic associations and 
brought np to believe in the invincibility of their an- 
cestors, whose deeds are mainly chronicled in rhymes 
and ballads, they have quite naturally grown to be 
supercilious and haughty, with a feeling of superiority 
which their present circumstances by no means war- 
rant them in assuming. At heart, the Spanish people 
are kindly and courteous, but their consuming pride is 
the rock against which their nation has split, time and 
again. Another proverb of theirs says : " A true gentle- 
man would rather have his clothes torn than mended," 
and their contempt for outsiders is expressed in: 
"Abstract from a Spaniard all his good qualities and 
there remains a Portuguese. " It is not so much the 
fault of the Spaniard as of his ancestors, his antece- 
dents, that he is to-day vain, haughty, proud without 
reason, and firm in the belief that his country is the most 
glorious and its history the most noteworthy of any 
the world has ever known., 







HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 75 



It is for this reason that the early history of Spain is 
so involved in vainglorious accounts of heroes and the 
doings of somewhat mythical warriors, saints and 
kings, that it must be taken with a bit of caution. At 
the same time, this dubious portion is rather more in- 
teresting than some other that is or has been authenti- 
cated. Now, in one of the cloisters of the cathedral of 
Burgos, there is affixed against the w r all an ancient 
trunk said to be more than eight hundred years old, and 
to have once belonged to the veritable Cid himself. It 
is kept there not so much on its own account, as for the 
moral it serves to impress up the rising generations. 
The Cid was, if not actually once existent here, tbe 
typical warrior against the Moors, and above all a good 
hater of the despised Jews. And this trunk is said to 
be the very one which he at one time filled with sand 
and pebbles and pledged to the Jewish bankers in re- 
tarn for an advance of a large sum of money, and 
which he represented as being filled with jewels and 
precious stones. Tradition does not state what manner 
of Jews they were, who would accept such a pledge 
without examining it; but the trick has ever since 
been placed to the credit of the Cid, who has always 
posed as the one w T ho outwitted those hated people at their 
own game. To be a fighter of the Moors and a good 
hater of Jews and heretics, was, in the eyes of the 
Spaniards — and is to-day — proof sufficient that one was a 
perfect gentleman in his manners and a good Christian 
and certain to attain to the joys of paradise when he 
died. So of course the Cid went straight to glory at 




76 HOW SPAIN BEDEEMED HEBSELF. 

his demise and has been the favorite theme of poet 
ever since. To what, extent he was accepted as the 
typical hero of his time, may be seen by perusing the 
numerous "Ballads of the Cid,"someof which have 
been translated into English, and all which have been 
accepted by the Spanish as the gospel truth. 

If one need an excuse for frequently quoting from 
poetry contemporary with the times of which he is writ- 
ing, it may certainly bo found in these and other poems, 
collectively known as the "Ancient Spanish Ballads," 
in which are epitomized the leading events of the period 
of which they treat. " It is mainly in the ' ' Ballads of the 
Cid" that the most striking episodes cf his life have 
been preserved. His real name was Eodrigo del Bivar, 
and by this ho was known until ho had won the title 
which distinguished him in after years. It seems that 
he was a hair- brained swashbuckler sort of cavalier, in 
his younger years, and among his other adventures he 
met and fought with Count Gomez, who had a fair and 
beloved daughter. Eodrigo slew the count, and his 
daughter appealed to the King of Castile for redress. 

' • Within the court at Burgos a clamor doth arise, 
Of arms on armor clashing, of screams, and shouts, and cries; 
The good men of the king, that sit his hall around, 
All suddenly uprising, astonished at the sound. 

" The king leans from his chamber, from the baJcony on high: 
' What means this furious clamor my palace porch so nigh?' 
But when he looked below him, there were horsemen at the 

gate, 
And the fair Ximena Gomez kneeling in woful state. 







HOW SPAW REDEEMED HERSELF. 77 

" Upon her neck, disordered, hung down the lad}^s hair, 
And floods of tears were streaming upon her bosom fair ; 
Sore wept she for her father, the count that had been slain; 
Loud cursed she Roderigo, whose sword his blood did stain. 

" ' Good king, I am descended from barons bright of old, 
Who with Castilian penons Pelayo did uphold; 
But if my strain were lowly, as it is high and clear, 
Thou still shouldst prop the feeble, and the afflicted hear. 

" 'For thee, fierce homicide, draw, draw thy sword once more, 
And pierce the breast which wide I spread thy stroke before ; 
Because I am a woman, my life thou need'st not spare ; 
I am Ximena Gomez, my slaughtered father's heir. ' " 

But Rodrigo did not pause for more; he mounted his 
steed, Babicca, and galloped off to slay some hundreds 
or so of the Moors. And in due time the fair Ximena 
was impressed by his great bravery and grew to love 
him — so the ballad runs : 

" Now of Rodrigo del Bivar, great was the fame that run, 
How he five kings had vanquished, proud Moormen every one ; 
And how, when they consented to hold of him their ground, 
He freed them from the prison wherein they had been bound. 

" To the good King Fernando, in Burgos where he lay, 
Came then Ximena Gomez, and thus to him did say : 
' I am Don Gomez' daughter, in Gormaz count was he ; 
Him slew Ridrigo of Bivar, in battle valiantly. 

" ' Now I am come before you, this day a boon to crave — 
And it is that I to husband may this Rodrigo have ; 
Grant this, and I shall hold me a happy damosell, 
Much honored shall I hold me — I shall be married well. " 



78 HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 

The king highly approved the match and sent his 
royal commands to Rodrigo to that effect. What the 
knight thought and said has not been recorded ; but he 
held, like the true and loyal knight that he was, that 
he really owed Ximena a man for having deprived her 
of her lawful protector, and prepared to obey. With a 
retinue of two hundred gayly-caparisoned attendants, 
he set forth to meet the king. 

" The king came out to meet him with words of hearty cheer; 
Quoth he : ' My good Rodrigo, right welcome art thou here ; 
This girl, Ximena Gomez, would have thee for her lord, 
Already for the slaughter her grace she doth accord. 

u ' I pray thee be consenting, my gladness will be great; 
Thou shalt have lands in plenty to strengthen thine estate ;' 
* Lord King, ' Rodrigo answers, ' in this and all beside, 
Command, and I'll obey thee. The girl shall be my bride/ 

" But when the fair Ximena came forth to plight her hand, 
Rodrigo, gazing on her, his face could not command ; 
He stood and blushed before her; thus|at the last said he: 
' I slew thy sire, Ximena, but not in villainy. 

<{ ' In no disguise I slew him — man against man I stood; 
There was some wrong between us, and I did shed his blood. 
I slew a man, I owe a man ; fair lady, by God's grace, 
An honored husband thou shalt have in thy dead father's 
place. ' " 

"And so they were married," and the chronicles say, 
lived happily together despite the ghost of the mur- 
dered count, who did not altogether approve of the pro- 
ceedings. But that was the style of a hero the Span- 
iards laudr^ 1 a those days, and he was the great proto- 







ROW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 79 



type of the heroes they worship at the present time. 
Their ideals have not greatly changed during the past 
thousand years; only to the bull-fighter of to-day has 
been transferred their idolatry. 

Legends and traditions, fiction and romance, we find 
mingled with historical accounts — as we have already 
noted. But finally, out of the confusion the truth is 
crystallized. We have referred to the fact that the last 
attempt by the Africans at universal conquest was 
when the Almohades crossed the Strait of Gibraltar 
with an army so vast that two months were consumed in 
the passage. Upon the walls of the cathedral of 
Burgos hangs £he banner of Alfonso VIII. , of Castile, 
who, together with the kings of Aragon and Navarre, 
won the great and decisive battle of Navas de Tolosa, 
by which the armies of the Almohades were destroyed 
and Moslem power shattered. This impressive victory, 
fruitful in .Qne hundred thousand Moslems slain, and 
plunder without stint, resulted in the entire liberation 
of the northern kingdoms from the Mahometan yoke. 
It also avenged the losses of Alarcos, in the battle lost 
by Alfonso VII., and prepared the way for the entire 
subjugation of most of the southern provinces. The 
battle of Tolosa turned the tide so strongly against the 
Mahometans that they never recovered, but steadily 
shrank toward the southern coast. Their discomfiture 
might have happened sooner if what soon took place — 
the union of Leon and Castile under one crown — had 
occurred earlier in the century. Alfonso the Noble of 
Castile died two years after the victory of Tolosa, and 







80 HOW SPAW REDEEMED HERSELF. 

was succeeded by his grandson Ferdinand, the third of 
the name, and who was canonized, long after his death, 
which occurred in the year 1252. Succeeding to the 
control of vast possessions and being able to unite the 
armies of Castile and Leon, Saint Ferdinand won a 
series of victories by which the Christian conquest was 
extended southwardly toward the Strait. Indeed, by 
the successive captures of Cordova in 1236, of Jaen 
in 1246, of Seville in 1247, and finally of Jerez and 
Cadiz in 1250, Saint Ferdinand created a chain of 
Spanish cities connecting the interior of Spain with the 
southern Atlantic coast, and thus retrieved in great 
part what the Goths had lost five hundred years and 
more before. The King of Aragon, Jayme I., had 
gradually advanced along the western coast of Spain, 
so that he had driven the Moors from Valencia and 
Murcia. The Guadalquivir now became the southern 
frontier of the Christian strongholds, and the Moors 
were restricted solely to the provinces of Aimer" , 
Malaga and Granada. These were particularly fitted 
for people of their habits and nature, being semitropi- 
cal in their climate and fertile as to their soil. 
Through centuries of indulgence, in this favored land, 
the Moors had become enfeebled, enervated even, and 
had lost their love for war and battle. Believing that 
the Castilians would allow them to possess their lands 
in peace, they made treaty with them, consenting to 
become vassals, in effect, of the king, and to pay 
tribute. 

For more than two centuries the Moors were allowed 







HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 81 



to possess the province of Granada, but during this 
long period the Christians were not altogether idle. 
Saint Ferdinand died in 1252, and to-day we may see his 
tomb in the Capilla Real, the Royal Chapel, in the 
great cathedral of Seville. The sainted remains are 
contained in a shrine of silver, bronze and gold, while 
the banner he carried, the sword with which he so 
lustily smote the infidel, and the image of the Virgin 
which was always hung at his saddle-bow, are shown 
here also. 

This grand cathedral of Seville, the building of 
which occupied eighteen years, from 1401 to 1419, is 
one of the largest in Europe and ranks perhaps third in 
Spain, coming after those of Burgos and Toledo. Its 
most sacred relics may be those of Saint Ferdinand, 
but as some of its precious treasures are the famous 
paintings of Murillo and Campana, its custodia of 
silver, its fenebrario,oT great bronze candlestick twenty - 
five feet high, the carven choir-stalls, the high altar, 
and its numerous chapels. Another Ferdinand is also 
buried hese; beneath the pavement of the cathedral, 
no less than Ferdinand Columbus, son of the great 
navigator, and over his remains is the marble slab 
/originally intended to cover the bones of his father, 
with the famous inscription: U A Castillo, y a Leon 
Mundo nuevo dio Colon" 

Originally a Phoenician and then a Roman city, 
Seville can boast some of the most ancient ruins in 
Spain; of the Roman walls and aqueduct, remains of 
which are yet visible. Of the time when it was a 



>• •• 5SW8RSHffiB 



82 ^TOTT SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 

Moorish city and the center of refinement, of learning 
and silk manufactures, there are still many evidences. 
Above the cathedral, so close in fact as to appear 
a tower attached rises the grand campanille, the 
"Giralda," which was built by the Moorish king Abu 
Yacoub in 1196, nearly fifty years before the city fell 
to the Christians. It was originally two hundred and 
fifty feet in height, and of admirable proportions, but 
the Spaniards, in 1568, added a hundred feet to its 
altitude and crowned it with a figure of Faith, which 
is now called the "Girandillo." This is one of the 
"lions" of the old Moorish capital, but the chief attrac- 
tion of Arabic origin is the equally famous Alcazar, 
which is typical of what the five hundred years of 
Moorish domination brought forth. 

Like its great Gothic rival (speaking architecturally) 
the cathedral, it occupies perhaps the third place in the 
structures of its kind, ranking after the mosque of Cor- 
dova and the Alhambra of Granada. But, with its 
seventy-eight apartments and patios with their wealth 
of mosaics and elegant arabesques, with its attached 
garden filled with fountains and fantastic walks, the 
Alcazar is one of the most beautiful of architectural 
creations. In its great central patio or court were 
gathered, tradition tells us, those beautiful maidens 
(to whom allusion has been made) once sent annually 
by the Castiliansto the Moorish kings, to the number of 
one hundred, and whose memory, is perpetuated by its 
name: "Patio of the Princesses." 

After the passing away of Saint Ferdinand, this de- 



HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 83 

fender of the Christian faith, there came to the throne 
his son, Alfonso X., who was known as "el sabio" or 
the wise, for he turned his attention to learning rather 
than to feats of arms and wrote, or caused to be writ- 
ten, a Bible, works on chemistry and philosophy, and 
a record of Spanish events down to the time of his 
accession. 

A son and successor, Sancho IV., repulsed an at- 
tempted invasion of the Moors of Morocco, in 1291, 
and during the reign of his grandson, Ferdinand IV., 
in the year 1303, the fortress of Gibraltar was wrested 
from the infidels. 

A final invasion by the combined Moors and Berbers 
of Africa, in the year 1340, was entirely frustrated by 
the glorious victory of Kio Salado, by the Christian 
armies under Alfonso XI., and the King of Portugal, 
when the killed of the enemy amounted, it was esti- 
mated, to more than two hundred thousand, and lay 
piled in heaps so vast that it was impossible to bury 
them. 

Alfonso XI., died and the throne fell to his son Pedro, 
whose surname the Cruel was obtained by certain 
acts, such as the murder of his half-brother, Fadrique 
and the supposed assassination of his wife Blanche, 
in order to marry his mistress, Maria de Padilla. The 
Alcazar is rich in, or rather reeks with, memories of 
this royal pair, Pedro the Cruel and Maria, the gardens 
in which they walked and the rooms in which they 
carried on their amours being pointed out and indicated 
by their names. Within the walls of the Alcazar, also, 



W/KKKHBHBm 



84 HOW SPAIN REDEEMED. HERSELF. 

is said to have taken place the terrible massacre by 
Pedro's commands of the emir of Granada and fifty of 
his nobles, whose throats were cut while they were his 
guests and supposed to be protected by a flag of truce. 
It may be that Pedro the Cruel was a victim of circum- 
stances and did not commit all the crimes imputed to 
him ; at all events he was very brave, even though a 
relentless enemy, and at the last, when brought face to 
face with his half-brother Henry of Trastamare, fought 
with the latter fiercely for his life, and only gave up 
when stabbed in the back and spent with loss of blood. 
This event occurred in 1379, and the throne came to 
that same half-brother who had killed him during the 
desperate fight in the tent to which Pedro had been 
lured by treachery. Henry of Trastamare reigned but 
ten years, but long enough to raise issue to succeed to 
the throne, his son, John I., carrying the succession to 
the year 1390. There had been a candidate for the 
throne of Castile in the person of the English John of 
Gaunt, in 1385, but he was placated by the promise 
that John's son, who later reigned as Henry III., 
should marry his daughter Catherine; which event in- 
deed came to pass, in the year 1390, at the death of 
John. 

It is a strange commentary upon the times that by 
this marriage the grandson of the fratricide, Henry of 
Trastamare, in the person of Henry III., should marry 
a granddaughter of Pedro the Cruel, this Catherine 
being a daughter of Constance, whose mother was 
Maria de Padilla. 



F 



HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 85 

Of this person who became Pedro the Cruel's queen 
on the death of his lawful wife, Blanche of France, an 
English writer says: "Maria was often, in consequence 
of her close intimacy with the Jews, called by the 
name of their hated race; but she was in reality not 
only of Christian, but of noble descent in Spain. How- 
ever that might be, Pedro had found her in the family 
of his minister, Albuqurque, where she had been 
brought up, loved her with all the violence of his tem- 
per, and made her his wife in all things but the name. 
Although political motives, long afterwards caused him 
to contract an alliance with a princess of the French 
blood royal, the unfortunate Blanche of Bourbon, he lived 
with the young queen but a few days, and then deserted 
her forever, for the sake of this beautiful, jealous, and 
imperious mistress, whom he declared to be his true wile. 
. . . That Pedro was accessory to the violent death of 
this young and innocent princess, whom he had mar- 
ried and then deserted for Maria, there can be no 
doubt This deed was avenged abundantly, for it cer- 
tainly led, in the issue to the downfall and death of 
Pedro. Mariana says, very briefly, that the injuries 
sustained by Blanche had so much offended many of 
Pedro's own nobility, that they drew up a formal re- 
monstrance; and that he, his proud and fierce temper 
being stung to madness by what he considered an un- 
justifiable interference with his domestic concerns, im- 
mediately gave orders for the poisoning of Blanche in 
her prison.' ' 

In this connection, and in view of the subsequent 



86 HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 

height to which the descendants of Pedro the Cruel 
and Henry of Trastamare attained, in the persons of 
Ferdinand and Isabella, we may be pardoned for again 
referring more particularly to that fatal fend between 
the two half-brothers. 

It may be recalled that " when Don Pedro had, by 
his excessive cruelties, quite alienated from himself 
the hearts of the great majority of his people, Don 
Henry of Trastamare, his natural brother, who had 
spent many years in exile, returned suddenly into Spain 
with a formidable band of French auxiliaries, by whose 
aid he drove Pedro out of his kingdom. The voice of 
the nation was on Henry's side, and he took possession 
of the throne without further opposition. Pedro, after 
his treatment of Queen Blanche, could have nothing to 
hope from the crown of France, so he immediately 
threw himself into the arms of England; and Edward 
the Black Prince, who then commanded in Gascony, 
had more than one obvious reason for taking up his 
cause. 

By the battle of Najara, which took place in 13G8, 
Henry was defeated and compelled to fly beyond the 
Pyrenees; but finally when Edward had become dis- 
gusted at the cruelties of Pedro and left him to fight 
it out alone, Henry returned at the head of an army of 
mercenaries and in turn put Pedro to flight. Attempt- 
ing to escape from a fortress in which he was be- 
leagured, Pedro fell into the hands of a body of French 
cavalry, who delivered him over to the friends of 
Henry. "On entering the tent where his unfortunate 



HOW SPAIN REDEEMED HERSELF. 87 

brother had been placed, Henry exclaimed : ' Where is 
that bastard and Jew who calls himself King of Cas- 
tile?' Pedro, as proud and fearless as he was cruel, 
stepped instantly forward and replied: 'Here I stand, 
the lawful son and heir of Don Alphonso, and it is thou 
that art but a false bastard.' (Which was probably 
the truth.) The rival brethren instantly grappled like 
lions, the French knights looking on. Henry drew his 
poniard and wounded Pedro in the face, but his body 
was defended by a coat of mail. A violent struggle 
ensued. Henry fell across a bench, and his brother, 
being uppermost, had well-nigh mastered him, when 
one of Henry's followers seizing Don Pedro by the leg, 
turned him over, and his master, thus at length gain- 
ing the upper hand, instantly stabbed the king to the 
heart. ... Pedro's head was cut off and his body 
meanly buried. But his remains were afterward dis- 
interred by his daughter, the wife of John of Gaunt, 
' time-honored Lancaster,' and deposited in Seville, 
with the honors due to his rank." 



88 A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 



VII. 

A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 

1 ■ At the feet of Don Henrique now King Pedro dead is lying. 
Not that Henry's might was greater, but that blood to Heaven 

was crying ; 
Though deep the dagger had its sheath within his brother's 

breast, 
Firm on the frozen throat beneath Don Henry's foot is pressed. 

" So dark and sullen is the glare of Pedro's lifeless eyes, 
Still half he fears what slumbers there to vengeance may arise. 
So stands the brother, — on his brow the mark of blood is seen; 
Yet had he not been Pedro's Cain, his Cain had Pedro been!" 

' Glad shout on shout from Henry's host ascends unto the sky : 
' God save King Henry — save the king— King Henry!' is their 

cry. 
Put Pedro's barons clasp their brows — in sadness stand they 

near. 
Whate'er to others he had been, their friend lies murdered 

here. " 

While it would be impossible eveD to mention in 
detail the different rulers and provincial governors of 
Spain, many of whom passed iot kings and upheld all 
the dignities of courts and royal assemblages, yet we 
have dwelt thus minutely upon the accession of Henry 
of Trastamare through the murder by his own hand of 




A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 89 

the lawful sovereign, in order to indicate the discordant 
elements of which the united kingdom of Spain was 
subsequently composed. That these elements were 
finally welded into a mass sufficiently coherent to ac- 
complish the century-long hope and praj 7 erof distracted 
Spain, is one of the wonders of that era of discord and 
strife. 

We are now approaching that happy period in the 
history of this country when it first became possible for 
it to cherish the hoperof a really national life; when 
the union of the two great sovereigns, Ferdinand and 
Isabella, made that desire a living realit} r . How dis- 
cordant were those elements, and how hopeless at one 
time seemed the object of the peoples' wish, will only 
appear when we glance at the ancestry of this royal 
pair. Going no further back than to this same Pedro 
the Cruel, we will first trace the lineage of Isabella. 

By his illegitimate union with Maria de Padilla, 
Pedro hadrt)ne daughter, Constance, who was married 
to English John of Gaunt, and whose daughter Cather- 
ine became the wife of Henry III., — as already men- 
tioned — their son was John II., of Castile, who reigned 
until 1454, and left the throne to his son Henry IV., 
who, like his father, was twice married, and like him 
also was weak and vacillating, ruled more by his prime 
minister than by his own will. 

Henry IV. died in 1474, leaving no male issue, but a 
daughter, Juana the Beltraneja, as she was called in 
allusion to her doubtful paternity. The contest for the 
throne of Castile now resolved itself into the rivalry 



90 A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 

between this daughter, alleged by many to be illegiti- 
mate, and Isabella, sister to Henry IV., born in 1451, 
and the daughter of John II. of Castile. It happened 
that the subsequent doings of this daughter, Isabella, 
constituted almost the sole claim John II. of Castile had 
to fame; but this is anticipatory of events. 

Going back again to the accession of Henry II., the 
bastard son of Alfonso XI., whose son John I. married 
Eleanor, daughter of Peter of Aragon, and thus estab- 
lished a succession to that throne. Their son became 
Ferdinand of Aragon and Sicily, whose son John II. of 
Aragon married Mary, daughter of John II. of Castile, 
and their heir, Fredinand, was thus a first cousin to 
Isabella. He was born at Sos in Aragon, March 10, 
1492; she first saw the light on April 23, 1451, and was 
consequently his senior by nearly a year. 

These are the antecedents of Isabella and Ferdinand, 
whose joint reign became the "most glorious in the his- 
tory of Spain. At first glance it would not seem that 
much that was promising or fruitful could proceed from 
the union of these two, descended as they were from 
scions of doubtful legitimacy, and so closely allied by 
the ties of consanguinity. Yet in them — although 
their descendants showed the curse of consanguinity, 
and by their erratic behavior the possession of dis- 
tempered minds — we find apparently sane minds m 
bodies of perfect physical development. 

While her brother Henry lived, Isabella dutifully re- 
frained asserting her claims to the throne of Castile, 
although attempts were made to oust him on the 






A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 91 

charge of incompetency. He lived a king to the end, 
thanks to Isabella's grace and courtesy, but at his 
demise his sister was crowned Queen of Castile and 
Leon, in the ancient city of Segovia, on December 13, 
1474. Isabella and Ferdinand had then been nearly five 
years married, the ceremony having been performed at 
Valladolid, on October 19, 1469, after they had baffled 
many attempts on the part of their enemies to prevent 
their meeting and union. As the presumptive heiress 
of Castile and Leon, Isabella had not lacked for suitors; 
two princes, a brother of Louis XI. of France, and a 
brother of Edward I. of England, and the King of 
Portugal, being prominent on her lists. But she turned 
her back upon them all, rejecting the overtures of for- 
eign sovereigns, merely to accept her cousin, Ferdi- 
nand, possible heir to a kingdom even smaller than her 
own. This action accorded well with the wishes of 
King John of Aragon, who probably saw into the 
future sufficiently to predict the benefits to Spain that 
would accrue from a union of his rugged kingdom with 
Castile and Leon. He died in 1469, leaving Ferdinand 
his heir, and peace being that year proclaimed between 
the warring factions, by Portugal yielding her claim 
which she had asserted, through Juana's being a 
daughter of a Portuguese princess, both came into pos- 
session of their own at practically the same time. 

"In that year also Ferdinand became King of Ara- 
gon, on the death of his father, and the two kingdoms 
of Aragon and Castile were united in the persons of 
Ferdinand and Isabella; the latter, however, as long as 



92 A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 

she lived, maintained authority and control in Castilian 
affairs. The reign that followed is one of the greatest 
in the history of Spain, which was in a few years ad- 
vanced to the first rank among the nations by the mili- 
tary, administrative and diplomatic skill of its sover- 
eigns, and of the distinguished body of ministers and 
generals that surrounded them. 

''Ferdinand's political talents found plenty of scope 
in the distracted condition of affairs which met him on 
his accession — the kingdom split into factions, feuds 
raging between the great houses, and robbery and out- 
rage rife in every quarter of the country, The effectual 
suppression of the banditti he accomplished by re- 
organizing the santa hermandad, or 'holy brotherhood/ 
a kind of militia-police, composed of the citizens and 
country people. Moreover, a principal aim of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella was to break the power of the feudal 
aristocracy, and good use was made of the hermandad 
i 1 carrying out this design. The establishment of the 
Inquisition, in 1478-80, although primarily and mainly 
intended to further religious ends, likewise helped to 
lessen the nobles' influence; and Ferdinand also 
strengthened his power by investing in himself and his 
successors the grand-mastership of the military orders 
of Calatrava, Alcantara and Santiago; in all which 
schemes he was ably seconded by his queen and by the 
celebrated Cardinal Ximenes." 

A glance at the map of Spain will show the com- 
manding position of the three united kingdoms of Cas- 
tile, Leon and Aragon, with their dependencies and 



A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 93 

leighbors. Their backs against the Pyrenees, their 
arms reaching out westerly to the Atlantic, and east- 
erly to the Mediterranean, they soon gathered to them- 
selves all that was non-Mohametan of the peninsula. 
In themselves, the two sovereigns represented the 
ancient Gothic blood, both being fair, blue-eyed and 
comely. Behind them, in fact, was a long line of 
Gothic ancestry, and the} 7 were, if any could be, repre- 
sentative of the strain of Pelayo, the first king whose 
throne was set up in a cave in the mountains of the 
northwest. Around them gathered the choicest spirits 
of Spain, and their court soon acquired a prestige 
which presaged diplomatic victories abroad as well as 
victories at arms in the field. 

What was the great and crowning event of their 
reign, however — the total subjugation and ultimate ex- 
pulsion of the Moors — did not occur until after Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella had been united in the bonds of 
matrimony twenty -three years; until eighteen years 
after Isabella had been crowned Queen of Castile and 
Leon, and thirteen years had passed since the two were 
made sovereigns over the united kingdoms. During 
the intervening years they were gathering their forces 
together, accumulating a vast store of sage experience 
and calling to their aid the counsel of the wisest of their 
subjects. In point of fact, though they had in a great 
measure succeeded in consolidating their empire, yet 
the nobles of their land were more like vassals than 
subjects. They still possessed vast estates covered with 
retainers of whom they exacted allegiance, and whom 




94 A CONSOLILATED KINGDOM. 

they led to battle like independent sovereigns. It was 
as much, perhaps, to cause to cohere more closely this 
loosely-held mass of the nobility, as to crush the power 
of the Moors, that the campaign was inaugurated which 
eventuated in the accomplishment of both. 

It was in this interval of comparative peace, and 
while conserving their energies for the notable achieve- 
ment of their lives, that the children were born who 
caused them so much solicitude and from whom, in the 
way of alliances with foreign sovereigns, Isabella and 
Ferdinand hoped so much. That their plans came 
mostly to naught, and that from that child of whom they 
expected least (she who became known to history as 
1 'Crazy Jane") their greatest hopes were destined to 
fruition, is one of the curious facts the historian has to 
chronicle. 

Their first child, Isabella, was born in 1470, and, as 
Princess of the Asturias, married Alfonso, a prince of 
Portugal; but he died and she then married Emanuel, 
King of Portugal. The child of her second marriage, 
Miguel, died when but two years old, and his mother 
had already preceded him to the grave by a year, de- 
parting in 1478. Prince Juan, her brother, and the only 
son of Isabella and Ferdinand, born 1478, died at the 
age of nineteen ; so that by these two deaths the throne 
was left without a male successor. The child next of 
age was Juana, born 1479, who married Philip, son of 
the Emperor Maximilian; and after her came Maria, 
born 1482; and Catherine, 1485. The last-named, was 
the unfortunate princess who first married Arthur, 






A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 95 

Prince of Wales, and then bis brother, Henry VIII. , 
of England. Sbe was the Catherine of Aragon, the 
first wife of Henry VIII., who was the indirect cause 
of the Reformation in England. Married to King 
Henry in 1509, within the next ten years she bore him 
five children, one of the number only surviving, who 
became the "Bloody Mary" of after years. Inextrica- 
bly mixed, seem these mingled Spanish-English alli- 
ances, for while, by insisting upon a divorce from 
Catharine, some years later, Henry VIII., incensed her 
nephew Charles, son of her sister Juana — then a power- 
ful sovereign — yet many years after her daughter Mary 
was not only bethrotbed to Charles, but afterward 
actually married his son, Philip II. All these events 
will be treated in due course, but this series is men- 
tioned in this connection, merely to show that the for- 
eign alliances matrimonial into which Isabella and Fer- 
dinand entered, were not at first successful. Prince 
Juan, who had married Margaret, daughter of Emperor 
Maximilian, died while yet a youth and without an 
heir; likewise his sister Isabella, whose son survived 
her but a year or so; and now Catharine became pre- 
cluded from rendering her royal parents happy by the 
eccentricities of her unamiable husband. 

The Princess Juana, or Joanna, was then the only 
hope of her parents for a diplomatic connection that 
should if possible enhance the glories of their reign. 
She was married to Margaret's brother, the Archduke 
Philip, to whom she became devotedly attached, and 
their only son — afterward known as Charles I. of Spain, 



A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM, 

and the Emperor Charles V. of Germany, carried 
Spanish power and prestige to its zenith. 

Having shown in which direction the line of Isabella 
and Ferdinand was perpetuated, let us now return to 
consider their family and public relations. As to their 
mutual relations, each was to the other the needed 
complement: Ferdinand cold and calculating, politic 
and even crafty — dishonest some have said — unscrupu- 
lous w r here the prize at stake was worth the while in 
his estimation; Isabella warm and loving with a 
mother's heart beating beneath the silken garb of royalty 
yet business-like and methodical in her dealings with 
the world. She has been called generous and sympathe- 
tic — the "gentle queen" — yet she sanctioned the intro- 
duction into Spain — or the re-establishment — of the terri- 
ble Inquisition. She was extremely religious, and her 
chiefest failing w 7 as that bigotry which led her to insti- 
tute this scandal of the world, the "holy office" of the 
Inquisition, under the arch-fiend Torquemada, who, in 
the guise of a priest had won her unsuspecting heart. 
This is another of the paradoxes of history: this union 
of the bigot and the Baint in one and the same individ- 
ual, as in Isabella the First of Spain. 

But her unalterable determination was to rid her 
beloved land of the Jew and the Moor, of the "heretic" 
and the unbeliever. It was to be a paradise only for 
"Catholics" to dwell in, and in rendering it so she 
probably thought she was doing God a service. How- 
ever, we have not to do with the motives of men and 
women, even in high stations — it is their actions and 




A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 97 

the results of those actions, by which they are to be 
judged. Ferdinand and Isabella, judged by the stan- 
dard even that prevailed in their times, fall far short of 
what they should have been. They were mean and 
bigoted, narrow-minded, avaricious, devoid, of the com- 
passionate feelings common to the meanest of human 
beings at the present day. They had a purpose and held 
to it; this is to their credit. They availed themselves 
of every circumstance to exalt their country and make 
it glorious; this, so far as it relates to their love of 
country, is also to their credit. But they took good 
care that all revenues, all acquisitions of territory, the 
compensation for all adventures and voyages, should 
revert to them, and to them alone. They sought to 
build, upon the backs of a prostrate people, a fabric of 
royalty that should endure and perpetuate itself forever 
at the peoples' cost. And they well-nigh succeeded; 
Spain to-day is groaning beneath the accursb burdene 
which was originally imposed by this crafty pair of 
schemers against the liberties of the people. For cen- 
turies, now, the ignorant people of Spain have hugged 
to their bosoms, have impoverished themselves to sup- 
port, the descendants of bastards and fratricides, 
burners of heretics and oppressers of humanity, only 
because they have come to them wearing the insignia 
of royalty ! 

They played most successfully one portion of the peo- 
ple against the other : the nobles against the common 
sort, the peasants against the nobles, and the middle- 
classes against both; until finally all their liberties, 



98 A CONSOLIDATED KINGDOM. 

nearly all their jealously-guarded rights — their il fue- 
?*os" or ancient privileges — were relinquished into the 
royal hands. In the name of God, in the name of right- 
eous war against the infidels, the inhabitants of Spain 
werecalled upon to give freely of their substance, their 
life-blood, even, at the behest of the sovereigns. It has 
long been the custom with historians to see only the 
king and the queen, in the fore-front of the battles that 
have taken place 44 for God, for home, for native land." 
It has been their sacrifices, their sorrows, their depriva- 
tions, and finally their glory, that have engaged their 
attention and inspired their pens. But that has been 
because it is far easier to select a conspicuous figure and 
amplify it, rather than a thousand insignificant indi- 
viduals and ferret out their motives and inspirations. 
For the same reason, that it is easier to draw one 
well-rounded personality than a host of minor mortals,, 
the artist selects an episode of history, or some one 
great event, to be depicted on his canvas. 



THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 99 



VIII. 

THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 

Three- fourths of the fifteenth century had passed 
before the final preparations were consummated for the 
extinction of the Moors in Spain. Nearly eight hun- 
dred years had they lived here, reckoning from that 
first African invasion in the year 711; they had inun- 
dated the peninsula during the first century of their 
existence here, had leaped the barriers of the Pyrenees, 
had conquered all the chief provinces and cities, besides 
founding towns and cities of their own. They had 
proved more a blessing than a curse — always excepting 
the fact that their religion was irreconcilable with the 
general progress of the world — for they had irrigated 
vast desert tracts and brought them into cultivation, 
had improved the processes of agriculture until all 
Southern Spain, at least, blossomed with fruitful 
gardens and fields; had built palaces and mosques 
which yet remain to attest their wonderful skill as 
architects, and had greatly ameliorated the condition of 
the people at large. 

But the flood had spent itself upon the Pyreneean 
mountains, and the refluent wave, though more slowly 
than the first had advanced, subsided among the val- 




100 THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 

leys of the southern coast-land. At last, after centuries 
of fighting and after sullenly combating the rising 
power of the Christians, foot by foot as it were, the Moors 
had retreated behind the mountain barriers of Granada, 
where, between the snow-capped Sierras and the Medi- 
terranean shores, they found a congenial country, 
broken by rugged hills, but with most fertile vallej^s 
interspersed. Celebrated as it is for the production of 
almost every variety of fruit and vegetable, and for its 
no less varied climate, Spain yields her most bountiful 
blessings to the residents of her southern lands. 

The province or kingdom of Granada, into which the 
Moors at last were driven, and where they had resided 
for many years, in or about 1475, included an area at 
present covered by the modern provinces of Almeria, 
Malaga and Granada itself, to the extent of some 
twelve thousand square miles. It became an indepen- 
dent kingdom shortly after the fall of the caliphate of 
Cordova, and from the time of St. Ferdinand had paid 
tribute to the kings of Castile. Toward the end of the 
fourteenth century we find a well-established sover- 
eignty in Granada, under the Mahometan Yussef II., 
who, in the main on friendly terms with the Chris- 
tians, had yet led in an invasion of Murcia, seeking to 
recover some of his lost lands. This was futile, and he 
was fortunate that the divided state of the Christian 
kingdoms precluded the possibility of reprisals. He 
died in the year 1*396, and was followed by a son who 
reigned for the brief period of three years under the 
title of Mahomet V., and was succeeded by his broth- 




THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 101 



er, whose execution he had commanded but a few days 
before be expired. It is probable that he was assassi- 
nated, as many of the Granadan rulers fell as victims 
to the poniard and poison, and the dissensions among 
them were only less extensive than those among the 
Christian states. 

Under Yussef III., who reigned from 1399 to 1423, 
Granada became the refuge of fugitives from Christian 
Spain and Africa, and its population greatly increased. 
Yussef s hospitality was the means of increasing the 
strength of his kingdom, but the heterogeneous ele- 
ments thus introduced greatly augmented the danger 
from internal dissensions, and after his death, though 
his reign had been peaceful, succeeded bloodshed and 
disorder. His son Mahomet VII. was twice hurled 
from his throne, the first time by his own cousin, who 
occupied it for two years as Mahomet VIII. ; but who 
was in turn deposed by the first Mahomet and lost his 
head. His second deposition was brought about by 
another relative who usurped the throne ^ Yussef IV., 
but was soon ousted and Mahomet VII. took charge of 
his own. Yet again, a third time, he was deposed, 
and this time successfully, by one Mahomet ben Ozmin, 
who took the title of Mahomet IX. ; but during the ten 
t irbulent years of his reign he was opposed by a 
cousin, Mahomet ben Ismael, who finally overcame him 
and ascended the throne as Mahomet X., in 1454. 

He in time was succeeded by his son, Muley ben Has- 
san, under whom Granada was rent by feuds and civil 
strife. He was forced to abdicate in favor of bis 



102 THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 

brother Abdallah of Zagal, but only after the streets of 
Granada had run blood for days; and while Abdallah 
was in the field against the Christians, Muley's son 
seized the reins of power and forced the former to be- 
come a fugitive. The affairs of Granada, indeed, were 
involved inextricably, and the historian finds it difficult 
to follow the changes which occurred, by which first 
one fierce Arab and then another, was seated on the 
petty throne. Of course, during all these years of 
strife, the Christians had not been idle, and the result 
of every dispute between the insensate Moors was a loss 
of territory, until their province became much circum- 
scribed indeed. 

Had these Moors but kept watch upon the signs and 
portents they would have exerted all their power to 
preserve the peace among themselves and to strengthen 
their defenses. As it was, when the evidences were 
unmistakable that the Christians were at last resolved 
upoa their expulsion or destruction, they were in- 
trenched witbip walled cities of great strength and pos- 
sessed many cities which were almost invulnerable 
against the assaults of those primitive times, when artil- 
lery was rude and ineffective. When, therefore, King 
Ferdinand established his military court at Cordova, 
and as a provocative of war sent one of his trusted 
captains with a small escort to demand the tribute 
which for year? Muley Hassan had intermitted, the 
latter, confident ra his strength, returned a brave and 
haughty answer. "Tell your king," he is recorded as 
having said to the noble cavalier, Don Juan de Vera, 






THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 103 

"tell King Ferdinand that the kings of Granada who 
used to pay tribute in money to the Castilian crown, 
are dead. Our mint at present coins nothing but blades 
of scimitars and heads of lances." 

This memorable interview took place within the 
castle- palace, the famed Alhambra (which we will soon 
more minutely describe), perched upon the crown of a 
hill surrounded by walls o£ immense height and all but 
inaccessible to a storming party. Secure in what he 
considered was an impregnable castle, and surrounded 
by soldiers whom he thought to be invincible, Muley 
Hassan could afford to indulge in a bit of sarcasm at 
King Ferdinand's expense. The cavalier, Don Juan 
de Vera, bowed and withdrew, leading his little band to 
safety outside the walls, but noting carefully all their 
defenses. 

Both kings knew well enough that this demand for a 
revival of the ancient tribute was but a pretext, and 
none better than Muley Hassan appreciated its signifi- 
cance. Hardly had the band of cavaliers disappeared 
beyond the hills surrounding the plain of Granada than 
he sounded the alarm and assembled his warriors. 
Since the King of Castile meant war, the sooner it was 
begun, he thought, the better for the Moors. He would 
strike the first blow, and thus anticipate the Christians 
in their plans for reducing his fortress. With a small 
but chosen body of fighting men, King Muley Hassan 
marched forth from the Alhambra fortress one day in 
the winter of 1481, to the attack of a detached outpost 
called Zahara. It was a small place, consisting merely 



104: THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 

of the fort, perched upon a mountain top, and a hamlet 
tered around it. As there had been but few Moorish 
Is that year, and as the place was of great natural 
strength, the garrison of Christians was negligent as to 
its duties, and was easily surprised by a midnight 
attack. The greater part were put to the sword, and 
the remainder, together with the miserable inhabitants 
of the hamlet, sent as prisoners to Granada. 

The ancient chroniclers tell us that the news of this 
capture was as ill received by the residents of the 
Moorish capital as by the Christians, since they well 
knew that it would precipitate upon them all the hor- 
rors of a protracted war. As their king had begun it 
by thus promptly playing King Ferdinand's game, they 
knew also that they could expect no mercy — that itw r as 
to be a war to the bitter end. But whatever the recep- 
tion King Muley Hassan received at Granada, the 
grim old warrior expressed no regrets, and made all 
Laste to put his towns and cities, forts and castles, in a 
state of defense. It was while thus engaged that the 
expected happened — that is, one of his own fortified 
towns was carried by assault and the tables turned upon 
the Moors in a w r ay that caused the fierce old king to 
rage against all Christians, who, if he had his way, 
would be exterminated. 

Allusion has been .made already to the frail nature of 
the ties by which the noblemen of Spain were bound to 
Ferdinand, and to the almost imperial character of 
their possessions. This was well illustrated in the next 
stage of affairs, when, vexed at the slow and cautious 



THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 105 

movements of King Ferdinand, one of his nobles took 
the initiative and made the assault which retrieved the 
fortunes of war so far as Zahara was concerned. 
Dwelling in the country of Andalusia, not far from the 
city of Seville, was one of the most powerful of these 
nobles, Eodrigo Ponce de Leon, the Marquis of Cadiz, 
the owner of vast estates who bad an army of retainers 
constantly at his command. 

"The Marquis of Cadiz," says Washington Irving, 
in his "Conquest of Granada," "had vast possessions 
in the most fertile parts of Andalusia, including many 
towns and castles, and could lead forth an army into 
the field from his own vassals and dependents. On 
receiving the orders of the king (to be constantly on his 
guard against surprise) he burned to signalize himself 
by some sudden incursion into the kingdom of Granada 
that should give a brilliant commencement to the war, 
and should console the sovereigns for the insult they 
had received in the capture of Zahara. A» his estates 
lay near to the Moorish frontiers, and were subject to 
sudden inroads, he had always in his pay numbers of 
adalides, or scouts and guides, many of them converted 
Moors. These he sent out in all directions, to watch 
the movements of the enemy, and to secure all sorts of 
information important to the security of the frontier. 
One of these spies came to him one day in his town of 
Marchena, and informed him that the Moorish town of 
Alhama was slightly garrisoned and negligently 
guarded, and might be taken by surprise. This w s a 
large, wealthy and populous place, within a few leagues 



106 THE PRO VINCE OF GRANADA. 

of Granada. It was situated on a rocky height, nearly 
surrounded by a river, and defended by a fortress to 
which there was no access but by a steep and ragged 
ascent. The strength of its situation, and its being 
embosomed in the center of the kingdom, had produced 
the careless security which now invited attack." 

Briefly told, a night assault was planned, by which 
the devoted place was carried by storm, after the for- 
tress walls had been scaled by a chosen band of soldiers, 
and the garrison overcome. But Alhama was a walled 
town and when its citizens discovered the Christians in 
possession of the castle, they barricaded the city gates, 
manned the battlements and made it very uncomfor- 
table for the Marquis of Cadiz and his soldiers. The}- 
were, in fact, in great danger of being sent back empty- 
handed, when, the marquis seeing that the gate of the 
castle, which opened toward the city, was completely 
commanded by the artillery of the enemy, ordered a 
large breach to be made in the wall, through which he 
might lead his troop to the attack; animating them, in 
this perilous moment, by assuring them that the place 
should be given up to plunder, and its inhabitants made 
captives. The breach being made, the marquis put 
himself at the head of his troops and entered sword in 
hand. A simultaneous attack was made by the Chris- 
tians in every part — by the ramparts, by the gate, by 
the roofs and walls which connected the castle with the 
town. 

The Moors fought valiantly in their streets, from 
their windows, and from the tops of their houses. 







THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 107 

They were not equal to the Christians in bodily strength, 
for they were for the most part peaceful men, of in- 
dustrious callings, and enervated by the frequent use 
of warm baths; but they were superior in number, and 
unconquerable in spirit; old and young, strong and 
weak, fought with the same desperation. The Moors 
fought for property, for liberty, for life. . . . The 
Christians fought for glory, for revenge, for the holy 
faith, and for the spoil of these wealthy infidels. Suc- 
cess would place a rich town at their mercy; failure 
would deliver them into the hands of the tyrant of 
Granada. 

The contest raged from morning until night, when 
the Moors began to yield. Retreating to a large 
mosque near the walls, they kept up so galling a fire 
from it with their lances, cross-bows and arquebuses, 
that for some time the Christians dared not approach. 
Covering themselves, at length, with bucklers and 
mantelets, to protect them from the dead \y shower, they 
made their way to the mosque, and set fire to its doors. 
When the smoke and flames rolled in upon them the 
Moors gave up all as lost. Many rushed forth desper- 
ately upon the enemy, but were immediately slain; the 
rest surrendered themselves captives. 

The struggle was now at an end; the town remained 
at the mercy of the Christians; and the inhabitants, 
both male and female, became the slaves of those who 
made them prisoners. Some few had escaped by a 
mine or subterranean way which led to the river, and 
concealed themselves, their wives and their children, in 




108 THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA 

caves and secret places; but in three or four days were 
compelled to surrender themselves through hunger. 
The town was given up to plunder, and the booty was 
immense. There were found prodigious quantities of 
gold and silver, jewels, rich silks and costly stuffs of 
all kinds, together with horses and beeves, and abun- 
dance of grain, oil and honey, and in fact all the pro- 
ductions of this fruitful kingdom; for in Alhama were 
collected the royal rents and tributes of the surrounding 
country; it was the richest town in the Moorish terri- 
tory, and, from its great strength and its peculiar situa- 
tion, was called the "Key to Granada. " This attack 
and capture have been described at length, quoting 
from the inimitable historian of the Conquest, because 
of the vivid glimpses we obtain of the methods of as- 
sault, the weapons and armor, and of the barbarous 
treatment of the captives. Infancy and old age, tender 
womanhood and noble manhood, were alike disregarded 
by the captors; all went to swell the ranks of those 
already in slavery. 

The Marquis of Cadiz had won a victory, but his 
triumph was of short duration, for the fiery old king of 
Granada was soon raging at the walls, with an army 
twice the size of the besieged. Having wasted their 
captured spoils, the Christians were soon assailed by 
famine, and it would have gone hard with them had 
not succor arrived from an unexpected source — from 
the Duke of Medina Sidonia, hitherto an inveterate 
enemy of the Marquis of Cadiz. Between the two, 
Muley Hassan was forced to give up his designs as to 






THE PROVINCE OF GRAN ABA. 109 

recapture of ^ilhama, and retreat upon Granada. 
id this was one of the most glorious results of the war 
st begun : that those who, like the Duke of Sidonia 
id Marquis of Cadiz, had been hitherto rivals at arms 
jd deadly enemies, became reconciled and only strove 
for the greater good of their native land. Their men 
fraternized on the spot, and when the news reached 
Ferdinand that the King of Granada had been turned 
back, it was also accompanied by the grateful intelli- 
gence that two of the greatest nobles of his kingdom 
had agreed to join forces with him as against their 
common enemy, the hated Moor. 

King Ferdinand does not shine brilliantly as a com- 
mander in the field; his gifts were those of diplomacy 
and craft; he could turn to his own advantage the vic- 
tories gained by his captains in their battles, but was 
not himself successful as a fighter. 

He had set his troops in motion on receiving the news 
of the straits to which the Marquis of Cadiz was re- 
duced, but finding that the Duke of Medina Sidonia 
was ahead of him, turned back and awaited further 
tidings at the old city of Antiquera. He afterward 
resolved to lay siege to the important city of Loxa, and 
the result shows that the estimate already given of him 
was correct; for though he was accompanied by a large 
force, and there were then distractions among the 
Moors of Granada which prevented them from going in 
force to the assistance of the beleaguered city, yet he 
met with ultimate defeat and was compelled to raise 
the siege. He had called to his assistance all the sol- 






110 THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 

diers resident in cities as far north as Salamanca and 
Valladolid, and the great military orders of Santiago, 
Calatrava and Alcantara, and required them to furnish 
their own provisions, bombards, and other munitions of 
warlike character. By the end of June he found his 
forces all in front of the city, but on the opposite side 
of the river from it, and resisted all the counsel of his 
experienced generals to change his camp to a more 
favorable location. The result was that he was fiercely 
attacked by a wary old Moor, one Ali Atar, father-in- 
law of the then ruler of Granada (set up after the loss 
of Alhama, by his changeable countrymen), and this 
skillful veteran, though more than ninety years of age, 
prevailed against him to the extent of driving him to 
retreat. Old Ali Atar, also killed in single combat 
several of Ferdinand's most vailant cavaliers, and led 
his soldiers to the plunder of the Christians' tents. 

Meanwhile, Muley ben Hassan, King of Granada, 
had met with great disappointment, on his return from 
his fruitless attempt to recapture Alahama, and when 
he arrived at the gates of Granada, was denied admis- 
sion. In his stead, the Moorish nobles had raised up 
his youngest son, called Boabdil el Chico, and this un- 
dutiful heir o£ the old warrior mocked him from the 
walls. King Muley has the credit of -having murdered 
in cold blood all his children save that same Boabdil; 
and it must have been his most poignant regret, when 
he returned and found he had usurped his throne, that 
he had been so lenient as to spare even one — the wrong 
one, too, it seems, and the weakest of the old man's 







THE PROVINCE OF OBAN AD A. Ill 



numerous progeny. However, King Muley wasted no 
time in fruitless laments, but betook himself to the 
wide territory of the Duke of Medina Sidonia, where he 
made reparation for his rescue of the Marquis of Cadiz 
at Alhama by ravaging his estates and carrying off a 
vast collection of cattle, besides great plunder of other 
kind. Then he retired to a country-seat in the hills 
and from his eyrie watched the progress of events 
awhile, before taking again an active part in the pro- 
ceedings. Seizing upon a favorable opportunity, he led 
his still faithful band of savage Zegris into the Alham- 
bra, one night when the guards were lax, and put to 
the swords several score of his enemies before making 
good his retreat. 

It was in this manner, by their insenate quarrels 
among themselves, that the Moors gave aid to Ferdi- 
nand, when but for their feuds he might not have sub- 
dued them for many, many years. The end might have 
been postponed, but not averted; it was inevitable that 
the flag of the Prophet should soon float no more from 
the castles and watch towers of Spain. As the foray of 
Muley Hassan had touched the pride of Andalusia in a 
tender spot, some of the cavaliers organized a counter- 
foray into the hills and mountains of Malaga, whither 
the old king had retired with his spoils. This, it 
turned out, was one of the most disastrous events of 
that time, for the fortress of Malaga was under the 
command of a younger brother of the king, a skilled 
warrior, known as El Zagal, who was wary and watch- 
ful. No sooner had he learned that the cavaliers were 







112 



THE PROVINCE OF GRANADA. 



well within the gloomy forests of the mountains than he 
surrounded them with his trained troops, blocked all 
the passes, and rained down upon the devoted band 
such a fire of arrows, balls and even rocks and stones, 
that nearly all were killed. The few who escaped the 
general destruction and reached their homes, bore such 
tidiegs to their friends that there was universal mourn- 
ing. 






WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 



113 



IX. 



WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 



When, about the middle of the twelfth century, the 
greatest of Arab caliphs in Spain, Aben Alhamar, con- 
ceived the project of erecting a mosque, a palace and a 
fortified stronghold, he pitched upon one of the most 
picturesque places in the world, the steep craggy hill 
rising above the present city of Granada. Aben Al- 
hamar was a contemporary of the great King Ferdi- 
nand, conqueror of Seville, and is supposed to have 
aided that sovereign as an ally, at the memorable siege. 
His reign w r as one of peace at all events, and he de- 
voted the time usually occupied by the Moorish kings 
to war and razzias, to the cultivation of his mind and 
the welfare of his people. Having selected the spot, 
he summoned hither artists and artisans from Africa, 
Constantinople and Damascus, and together these cun- 
ning workmen wrought for many, many years, fin- 
ally producing that marvellous creation known as the 
Alhambra. 

The summit of the "Hill of the Sun," was leveled, 
and surrounded with a continuous wall of great height, 
having at intervals semidetached and crenelated towers 
overtopping all this fortification, thus inclosing 



114 WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 

within this impregnable defense a space of several 
acres. The centuries roll on, and the hold of the Arab 
Moor in Spain is weakened, is finally unloosed, and at 
last comes down Castilian Ferdinand with his armies 
and lays siege to Granada and the towering walls of its 
castle-palace. The Spanish king, as we have seen, 
had already taken from the Moors their largest cities 
and outlying strongholds; it was not until 1491 that he 
finally settled himself down to the last great affair of 
the war. 

The details of that siege we will glance at later; first 
let us examine that core of the* * pomegranate," Granada, 
the castle-palace of the Moorish king, Boabdil el Chico; 
the taking of which would end hostilities by depriving 
him of a nucleus of defense. The shining snows of the 
Sierras form a brilliant background for the rich-toned 
towers and walls, as seen from Granada and the op- 
posite hill of the Albaicin. Between the two hills 
flows the river Darro, spanned by arched bridges and 
overhung with trees. Far above, nearer the Sierras, 
perched on a shelf of still another hill, is the summer 
palace of the Moors, called the Generalife^ which is 
famous for its exquisite gardens and its marble corri- 
dors. Still higher, at the crest of the Hill of the Sun, 
is the great rock known as the " Seat of the Moor," from 
which a most extended view is obtained, over the two 
clusters of palaces, over the meadows or vegas of 
Granada and over the city itself. The Darro comes 
down from the mountains, fed by the melting snows 
of the Sierras, and its crystal waters are led in conduits 







WITHIN TEE ALHAMBRA. 115 



through all the courts of the Alhambra, and serve to 
irrigate innumerable gardens on the slopes of the hill. 

Along its farther bank live the vagrant gypsys, the 
Gitanos, those strange people who have squatted be- 
neath the Alhambra walls, and who persist in living 
there, dwelling for the main part in caves hollowed out 
of the solid rock. Over across on the western slope of 
the hill which here dips its feet in the river Xenil flow- 
ing placidly through the vega, are yet other little gar- 
dens, fruitful and blossoming, which were planted by 
the Moors hundreds of years ago, and which became 
the properties of the conquering Spaniards at the fall 
of Granada. 

In a general view of the Alhambra, first and most 
conspicuous is the great tower nearest the city of 
Granada, called the Torre del a Vela or the great 
Watch Tower, from which the Christian flag first 
floated after the surrender of the fortress. It still con- 
tains within its belfry the deep-toned, silver- voiced 
bell, which is yet, as in the days of the Moors, tolled at 
regular intervals to guide the farmers of the vega at 
their labors of irrigation. 

If we were to take a survey of the area of circumval- 
lation, we should be impressed with the magnitude of 
this vast work of the Moors, and, unless guided by one 
acquainted with the ground, become confused in its 
labyrinthine passages. 

Below the Watch Tower, beyond the grove of elms, 
is the more ancient Vermilion Tower, not at present 
accessible; and swinging around to the opposite side of 






116 WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA, 

the hill, above a lateral ravine of the Darro, we find 
another conspicious one, the Torre de los Picos, through 
a gate in which, says tradition, Boabdil the king last 
rode after the surrender of his citadel. Still another 
of the?e towers made famous by the former dwellers in 
them is that in which some Moorish princesses were 
once confined as prisoners by order of their cruel 
father the king. This tower lies about central of them 
all, and is still preserved in excellent condition. Walls 
and towers have changed but little since the time when, 
some seventy years ago, Washington Irving lived here, 
and here wrote his charming legends of the Alhambra. 
He, like the writer of these lines, once had the privi- 
lege of long residence within the walls and of dwelling 
in the history -haunted rooms. 

We should not forget, while describing the environ- 
ment of the Moorish citadel, that the only official en- 
trance to the Alhambra is through the arched gateway 
in the so-called Tower of Justice. This tower was 
erected in the year 1348, is nearly square, is forty-seven 
feet wide by sixty two in height, and has a narrow and 
winding passage through it, as an additional means 
of defense against possible invaders. In one of the 
inner porches sat the khalif, in Moorish times, to ad- 
minister what then passed for justice. In the keystone 
of the outer arch is carved a hand with fingers spread 
apart, which is said to symbolize the five points of 
Moslem law, and also to have been placed there to avert 
the evil eye. Inside, another keystone bears the image 
of a carven key, another symbol of Moslem ism denot- 






WITHIN THE ALIIAMBRA. 117 



ing the prophet's alleged power to open and shut the 
gates of heaven. And further, it is a Moslem tradition 
that when the hand outside reaches in and grasps the 
key, then Moslem power shall be restored in Spain. . . . 
Needless to add that hand has not yet grasped the key; 
they still remain apart. 

An open plazita, or small square, lies beyond the 
Tower of Justice, called the Place of Cisterns, because 
it covers immense subterranean reservoirs. Crossing 
this plazita, you find yourself before a plain, ugly wall, 
pierced by a small doorway, unassuming and unattrac- 
tive; but entering it you are at once transported into a 
realm of w r onders. Before you lies spread out the first 
of these famous courts, forming the glorious aggrega- 
tion of patios in which the palace of the Alhambra 
abounds. The entire structure, in fact, vast as it is, 
consists of a succession of open courts, surrounded by 
corridors of pillars of wonderful grace and lightness, 
these surmounted with stucco work in exquisite tracery. 
The numerous rooms, though many of them large and 
magnificent, seem but incidents in the general design. 
The first of these courts is that of "the Tank," some- 
times called the Myrtle Court, as it has both a hedge of 
myrtle and a tank or bath, the former inclosing the 
latter, which is one hundred and twenty -four feet in 
length, by twenty-seven wide, and five feet de< 
Though primarily constructed as a bathing pool for the 
Moorish kings, yet tradition states that many a tragedy 
has occurred here; many an erring woman of the harem 
here been deprived of life, many a death-cry here 



118 WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 

hushed forever in the still waters of that shallow pool 
in the Court of the Myrtles. 

Towering high above this patio, its crenelated crest 
mirrored in the water of the pool, rose the Tower of 
Comareh, the largest in the outer line of fortifications, 
and which contained the famous Hall of the Ambassa- 
dors, entrance to which is through the vestibule, or 
antesala, called the corridor of la Berca, or the Bene- 
diction. 

The Hall of the Ambassadors is the most spacious 
and the most celebrated for its traditions, and there is 
a certain grandeur to it, by which it would seem that 
the Moors had excelled even themselves, bestowing 
upon it the magnitude of the Roman, and the loftiness 
of the Gothic edifice. Here took place most of the 
scenes identified with the reign of fierce Muley Hassan 
and the fighting monarch, El Zagal, and which has- 
tened the prospective end of Granada. Here the cava- 
liers from Ferdinand were entertained when they 
sought tribute from the haughty Muley Hassan, and 
here Boabdil lamented his predicted overthrow, seated 
beneath the carved ceiling, and surrounded by the fair 
members of his harem. This was, indeed, the grand 
reception room of the kings of Granada, and perhaps 
the most impressive of the great halls, with its lofty 
ceiling of carved and painted wood, deeply recessed 
windows, and decorated doorways. Here, also, are 
most fascinating views outspread, beneath and beyond, 
as you look forth from the narrow, double windows, 
with their supporting pillars of alabaster. Here Arabic 



WITHIN THE ALHAMBBA. 119 

art and ornament were lavished without stint, here the 
Oriental imagination gave itself full play, and pro- 
duced forms so beautiful, it has been declared, as never 
to have been surpassed by artists or architects since. 
Some of the finest tiles in the palace were here, inlaid 
with bits of blue, gold, and vermilion, above them Cufic 
inscriptions interwoven with leaves and flowers. This 
great hall, so crammed with memories, was also called 
the Sala de Comareh, because the artists who decorated 
it came from Comareh in Persia. 

Next in size to the Myrtle Court is the Patio of the 
Lions, which was built in 1377; is one hundred and 
twenty -six feet long by seventy -three in width, and in- 
closed with a perfect forest of marble columns, to the 
number of one hundred and twenty-eight. At each 
end of this beautiful court is a projecting pavilion, 
composed of alabaster columns, with arches of open- 
work stucco, and, wrought upon the capitals, quaint 
Cufic inscriptions. Nothing can surpass the exceeding 
grace and airy beauty of these columned porticoes, 
which have withstood the assaults of time for more 
than five hundred years, and are still preaching the 
lessons of their builders. 

In the center of this court is the fountain from which 
it derived its name; a dodecagon basin, ten feet across 
and two deep, supported upon the backs of twelve 
objects with barbecued manes, carved from marble, 
and supposed to represent lions. Around the basin- 
brim is an Arabic poem in ancient meter, praising the 
constructor of this court. 







120 WITHIN THE ALHAMBBA 



Directly opposite the fountain, west, is the Hall of 
the Abencerrages, where, in that fierce contest between 
the African Zegris and the more cultured and noble 
Arabs, in the time of Boabdil, the Moorish royal guard, 
composed of the Arab Abencerrages, was massacred. 
The stains of their blood, as it flowed across the pave- 
ment, in a stream, are still pointed out, in the center of 
the hall. The roof or ceiling of this hall is one of the 
most fairy like constructions in the palace, and conse- 
quently in the world. It arches more than sixty feet 
above the pavement, where it has been for the past five 
centuries, and yet seems to the eye as light as thistle- 
down, or tuft of silken floss borne hither by the winds. 
Of similar construction — the two beautiful beyond com- 
pare — is the ceiling of the "Two-Sisters' Hall," across 
the Lions' Court, and which is said to be composed of 
more than five thousand pieces of reed and plaster, 
forming a rich profusion of minute vaults and domes, 
stalactites and pendentives, incomparaly rich and 
elaborate, and quite indescribable. On the imposts 
and the archi volts of the doorw r ays here are several 
diminutive shields, each with the motto: "God alone is 
Conqueror;" and over each is a latticed window, be- 
hind which the sultanas sat, unseen by others, and 
watched their lords and masters in the courts below. 

Still another corridor bounds the Lion's Court — the 
grand and distinctive Sala del Tribunal or Hall of 
Justice, a gallery seventy-five feet long and sixteen in 
width, divided into recessed alcoves formerly occupied 
by luxurious divans. Here, in these cool and delight- 



WITHIN THE ALHAMBllA. 121 

ful alcoves, the swart Moors reclined; here Isabella is 
said to have received Columbus, at one of their inter- 
views before the voyage to America; and at its farther 
end a latticed ajimez window gives outlook into a gar- 
den fragrant with roses and orange blossoms where is 
a fountain with an Arabic inscription describicg its 
delights. Into this same garden opens a double arched 
window in the "Mirador of Lindaraja" the sultana's 
boudoir — which is rich in exquisite dados, friezes, and 
iridescent tilings. Here we see in their perfection 
those iridescent tiles called azulejos the secret of whose 
manufacture has perished it is said. It is a matter of 
history that the Phoenicians of Spain, long before the 
arrival of the Moors, excelled ]m the manufacture of 
pottery; but the Spanish Arabs subsequently surpassed 
even them; for the Alhambra ceramics, says an author- 
ity, are among the finest in the world. "The Hispano- 
Moriscan ceramics occupy a distinct and distinguished 
place in the cabinets of collectors, and the Arabic 
azulejos had arrived at a high degree of perfection 
when the delfts of European countries were extremely 
crude." 

Deep down beneath the halls and corridors, reached 
by narrow passageways, are the subterranean baths, 
in a vast hall by themselves. This lower region is 
sometimes called the Hall of the Baths, and also the 
Room of Couches, or Room of Repose, because of its 
numerous alcoves where anciently the Moors, reclining 
upon silken divans passed the heated term of the day 
in this cool spot, lulled to sleep by clouds of incense 



122 WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 

coming up from below through the perforated floor and 
soothed by music from the halls above. There is like- 
wise a subterranean mosque, the fagade of which is 
entirely covered with inscriptions, such as: "The glory 
is God's;" "The power is God's, and empire," etc. 
All the walls, as well as the imposts, and the capitals 
of columns, all the archivolts and interspaces, are cov- 
ered with inscriptions; interwoven with arabesques 
are Alcoranic verses, to the praise of God and of the 
seer of Islam. One of the loftiest conceptions runs as 
follows: "By the sun and his rising brightness, by the 
moon when she follow eth him, by the day when he 
showeth his splendor, by the night when it covered him 
with darkness, by the heaven who built it, by the earth 
and Him who spread it forth, by the soul and Him 
who completely fashioned it and inspired into it both 
wickedness and piety, there is no god but Allah !" 

"lam a glorious altar for prayer, my direction is 
toward happiness." "I am like the seat of a bride, 
endowed with beauty and accomplishments." "View 
with attention this, my diadem, for thou wilt find its 
like only in the aureloa of the moon at its full." 

All the inscriptions were originally gilded, to make 
them prominent, but the antique colors now appear only 
in most sheltered places, as in the niches which were 
Tised as receptacles for books of prayer, amulets and 
lamps, perhaps for pieces of armor, and for scimitars 
and swords. If one were to enter into the minutiae of 
the Alhambra, he might wander here all the days of 
his life; for, how many thousand artists and architects 



WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 123 

labored here, year after year and century succeeding 
century to produce this work so stupendous in concep- 
tion and grand in realization; an offering to Allah 
worthy even the acceptance of the King of Kings? 

We can well believe as a certain writer has said that 
the Golden Age of Arabic culture in Spain reached 
its apogee in the construction and adornment of the 
Alhambra. In the farther East it had received that 
distinction six hundred years before, during the reign 
of the famous Haroun al Raschid, the celebrated Caliph 
of Bagdad, to which place the caliphate was transferred 
from Damascus. In Spain, at the same time, it was 
Cordova which was the seat of learning in the West. 
In the partition of Spain among the Mahometans, the 
fertile province of Granada fell to the ten thousand 
horsemen from Syria, "the noblest and best of the 
Arab invaders." 

We can trace here three periods of Moorish architec- 
ture, as illustrated, the first by the mosque of Cordova, 
the second by the Alcazar of Seville, the third by the 
Alhambra of Granada. 

"The style of the last," remarks an architectural au- 
thority, "represents the most florid development of Moor- 
ish art and architecture. It is, however, wanting in the 
unity of design, typical forms, lofty inspiration and 
breadth, for which the mosque of Cordova is so re- 
markable. But it stands unrivalled in the gorgeous 
splendor of its halls; and nowhere, at no time, has its 
decorative art been excelled. There are wonderful 
varieties of pattern, happy and novel appliances of 



124 



WITHIN THE ALHAMBRA. 



poetical conceit and Aleoranic passages, to enhance 
and form part of the ornamentation; airy lightness and 
veil-like transparency of filagree and stucco, and parti- 
tions colored like the sides of a Stamboul casket. A 
description of what it must have been in the time of 
its glory can only be found in the ' Arabian Nights.' r 

There is a fascination about the Alhambra which is 
irresistible, distinctively attaching to this relic of the 
ancient Moors. And this is owing, the Spaniards say, 
to the fact that it is still haunted by the ghosts of de- 
ed warriors, poets, artisans; those who have died 
in defense of it, whose lives have been passed in adorn- 
ing it, and who have poured forth their raptures in 
ise of it. Beautiful as it is by day, yet at night, 
flooded with the moonlight, the Alhambra is lovely 
jnd human conception. Especially charming it is 
ne who has wandered, with the spell of night and 
tne moon upon him, from dusky room to illumined 
patio, from the sweet silence of Linderaja's bower to the 
murmuring music of the Lion's Court, permeated as it 
is with the gurglings and groanings of the imprisoned 
which the poets have fancied the subterranean 
er3 imitated in their confinement. Ghostly fingers 
beckon from the deep recesses, fair faces gaze mourn- 
fully through the latticed windows, dark skinned, 
Yvhite robed Arab3 stalk gloomily adown the corridors, 
in their eyes bale fires glowing, in their hands naked 
scimitars gleamiug. All these apparitions come to 
him who visits the Alhambra by moonlight, if he will 






WITHIN THE ALHAMBEA. 125 

but seek the subterranean alcoves and give himself up 
to romantic speculation ! 

An Italian writer sa} 7 s respecting the strange charm 
of the Alhambra — the spell it weaves over those who 
visit it: " When people are in love they dream a little 
of the Alhambra; and, if they could translate inline 
and color all those dreams, we should have pictures, 
which would astonish us with their resemblance to 
what one sees here. This architecture does not express 
power, glory, grandeur, but rather, voluptousness ; 
love with its mysteries, caprices, and bursts of grati- 
tude to God ; its fits of melancholy and silences. There 
is thus a likeness, a harmony, between the beauty of 
this Alhambra and the soul of those who have been in 
love in youth, when desires are dreams and visions. 
From this arises the indescribable charm that this 
beauty exercises; and for this reason the Alhambra, 
though so deserted, and half in ruins, is still the most 
fascinating place in the world, and on seeing it for the 
last time strangers shed tears. It is because in salut- 
ing the Alhambra, one bids a last farewell to the moet 
beautiful of his youthful dreams, which are revived for 
the last time among its walls. One says adieu to faces 
indescribably dear; faces that have broken through the 
oblivion of many years, to look, for the last time, 
through the columns of those little windows!" 






126 PLUCKING THE "POMEGBANATEV 



PLUCKING THE POMEGRANATE." 

Such was the glorious palace and castle dominating 
the Moorish city of Granada. The city itself lay at its 
feet, or rather it was built on the edge of a great plain, 
called the Vega, and ran around the bases of and 
climbed the sides of two hills, that of the Alhambraand 
the Albaicin. Itself built upon four swelling elevations, 
somewhat resembling a cleft pomegranate, it had prob- 
ably derived its name from this fruit, as the name, 
Granada, in Spanish, to-day signifies a pomegranate. 
It was this significance attached to the Moorish city 
that caused King Ferdinand to say, when he started 
out on the great enterprise of reducing the city and its 
defenses: "I will pluck out the seeds of this pome- 
granate, one by one. " He meant the province, rather 
than the city, and that he would reduce all tho cities of 
the kingdom, one at a time, until there should not be 
one left for the Moors to dwell in. That he carried out 
his threat, we of the present age know full well; but it 
took several years more to accomplish it, even after the 
fall of the towns of Alhama and other minor places. 

Granada to-day is quite interesting, but it lacks the 
great walls which surrounded it at the time the Moors 
dwelt there. Its principal street is called the Vivar- 






PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." l^ 



ambla, and used to run along the banks of the Darro, 
which it now partially covers for a long distance. The 
most characteristic street is the Zacatin, which was 
once the Moorish market-place, where the Arabs sold 
fine silks and jewels manufactured by themselves. 
Occupying the site of a Moorish mosque, is the finest 
structure of Granada city, the great cathedral, which 
contains many relics of the past, as well as articles of 
ecclesiastical furniture. 

Attached to the cathedral is the so-called Royal 
Chapel, where lie buried the sovereigns of whom we 
are writing, Ferdinand and Isabella, under whom the 
Moors were expelled and the first voyage to America 
undertaken. Their tombs are of the finest alabaster 
richly sculptured, and surmounted by chiseled effigies 
of the king and queen. Beneath these tombs is a vault 
containing four leaden coffins, within which are inclosed 
the remains of these sovereigns and of their daughter 
Juana and her husband Philip. In a room adjoining 
the chapel are shown various relics of Ferdinand and 
Isabella, such as the king's sword, and her scepter and 
missal, with illuminated pages. 

It was in accordance with their wishes, that they 
were brought here to be entombed, for they considered 
Granada as the brightest, most lustrous jewel in their 
crown, and their conquest of the Moors who held it as 
one of their greatest accomplishments; so they com- 
manded that when they should die their remains should 
bo brought here for sepulture. Their desires were fill* 
filled, and there they lie now, as they have lain nearly 



128 ' PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 

four hundred years, beneath the marbles raised above 
them by their grandson, Charles V. 

The leisurely manner in which the Spaniards set 
about the reduction of the Moorish cities made the con- 
quest seem more like a protracted series of pleasure ex- 
cursions than a conflict to be continued to the death. 
Having established their court at Cordova, the sover- 
eigns passed the winter seasons in gayety, and in 
attending to the affairs calling for their attention in 
other parts of their kingdom, and in the early spring 
sent forth an army to attack and lay siege to a Moorish 
town or two. In this manner, but after most obstinate 
defenses by the Moorish garrisons, some of the smaller 
strongholds were reduced and became Christian prop- 
erty, their surviving soldiers and inhabitants captives 
and slaves. 

Working his way down through the rugged moun- 
tains Ferdinand at last invested Malaga, the last re- 
maining port of Granada, which gave the harried king- 
dom its only open connection with Africa. Malaga 
to-day is a picturesque but extremely filthy city, on the 
Mediterranean ; in Moorish times it was vastly more 
picturesque than now, cleanly and charming, with a 
vast fortress dominating the port and adjacent vine- 
yards and olive orchards. With the exception of Loxa 
— from which he was compelled to retreat, as we have 
seen — Ferdinand never attacked a town or city, or sat 
down before it, without eventually reducing it to terms. 

41 The first operations of the Spaniards were directed 
against the suburb on the land side of the city. The 



\ 



PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 129 



panish ordnance was served with such effect that a 
practicable breach was soon made in the wall. The 
combatants now poured their jnurderous volle} r s on 
each other, through the opening, and at length met on 
the ruins of the breach. After a desperate struggle the 
Moors gave way. The Christians rushed into the in- 
closure, at the same time effecting a lodgment on the 
rampart; and, although a part of it, undermined by the 
enemy, gave way with a terrible crash, they still kept 
possession of the remainder and at length drove their 
antagonists, who sullenly retreated, step by step 5 within 
the fortifications of the city. The lines were then 
drawn around the place. Every avenue of communi- 
cation was strictly guarded, and every preparation was 
made for reducing the town by regular blockade. 

"In addition to the cannon brought around by water 
from Velez Malaga, the heavier bombards, which from 
the difficulty of transportation had been left during the 
late siege at Antiquer were now conducted across roads, 
levelled for the purpose, to the camp. Supplies of 
marble balls were also brought from the ancient and 
depopulated city of Algeciras, where they had lain ever 
since its capture in the preceding century by Alfonso 
XI. The camp was filled with operatives, employed in 
the manufacture of balls and powder, which were 
stored in subterranean magazines, and in the fabrication 
of those various kinds of battering enginery, which con- 
tinued in use long after the introduction of gunpowder." 

The siege of Malaga was protracted to great length 
by the valor and obstinacy of its defenders; it lasted so 



130 PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 

long, in fact, that hundreds of foreigners came to view 
the proceedings, and formed no inconsiderable portion 
of the Spanish army. .This siege was signalized by at 
least two events: one was the arrival here before 
Malaga of Queen Isabella, who brought with her a train 
cf admirers and courtiers; and the other was a dar- 
ing attempt which was made upon her life by a Moor who 
obtained access to her tent and endeavored to stab one 
of her ladies-in-waiting, mistaking her for the queen. 
When at last, succumbing more to starvation and 
famine than to Spanish cannon, the inhabitants of 
Malaga agreed to surrender, they were all made slaves 
by the cruel Ferdinand, who not only obtained by stra- 
tagem possession of their wealth — of the gems and 
jewels they might otherwise have secreted — but of their 
persons. The last to surrender was the garrison of the 
Gibalfaro, the tower overlooking the city and occupied 
by African Moslems. 

The talented historian, Prescott, from whom we have 
already quoted, and who seems ever to have been an 
ardent apologist for the king and queen — his clearness 
of vision perhaps dimmed by the grandeur of their sta- 
tion and their mighty deeds— sa} 7 s of the terrible edict 
passed against the dwellers in Malaga 

"The city was computed to contain from eleven to 
fifteen thousand inhabitants, exclusive of several thou- 
sand foreign auxiliaries, within its gates at the time of 
surrender. One cannot, at this day, read the melan- 
choly details of its story without feelings of horror and 
indignation. It is impossible to vindicate the dreadful 







PLUCKING TEE "POMEGRANATE." Vol 

sentence passed on this unfortunate people for a display 
of heroism which should have* excited admiration in 
every generous bosom. It was obviously most repug- 
nant to Isabella's natural disposition, and must be 
admitted to leave a stain on her memory, which no 
coloring of history can conceal. It may find some pal- 
liation, however, in the bigotry of the age, the more 
excusable in a woman whom education, general ex- 
ample, and natural distrust of herself, accustomed to 
rely, in matters of conscience on the spiritual guides, 
whose piety and professional learning seemed to qualify 
them forthetrust(P) Even in this very transaction, she 
fell far short of the suggestions of some of her counsel- 
lors, who urged her to put every inhabitant, without 
exception, to the sword; which, they affirmed, would 
be a just requital of their obstinate rebellion, and 
would prove a wholesome warning to others. We are 
not told who the advisers of this precious measure were; 
but the whole experience of this reign shows that we 
shall scarcely wrong the clergy much by imputing it to 
them. That their arguments could warp so enlightened 
a mind as that of Isabellaes, from the natural principles 
of justice and humanity, furnishes a remarkable proof 
of the ascendency which the priesthood usurped over 
the most gifted intellects. . . . The fate of Malaga 
may be said to have decided that of Granada. The 
latter was now shut out from the most important ports 
along her coast; and she was environed on every part 
of her territory by her warlike foe, so that she could 
hardly hope more from subsequent efforts, however 







132 PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE. 



strenuous and united, than to postpone the inevitable 
hour of dissolution. The cruel treatment of Malaga 
was the prelude to a long series of persecutions, which 
awaited the Moslems in the land of their ancestors; in 
that land over which the 'star of Islamism' — to borrow 
their own metaphor — had shone in full brightness for 
nearly eight centuries, but where it was now fast de- 
scending amid clouds and tempests to the horizon." 

Malaga capitulated in 1487; yet there were a few 
1 'seeds' 5 remaining in the Moorish pomegranate, and 
one of the most important was the city of Baza, to 
which Ferdinand lay siege in the spring of 1489. This 
city was strongly fortified, and aftor the Spanish army 
had arrived in front of it, two months and ten thousand 
men were employed in throwing up a line of intrench- 
ments which completely inclosed it within "an un- 
broken line of circumvallation." 

The fate of Baza was ultimately that of Malaga, not- 
withstanding an heroic defense by its garrison, ani- 
mated by the presence and example of their chief, El 
Zagal, the fiery uncle of King Boabdil of Granada. 
The whole summer passed away before Baza succumbed 
to the strength and persistence of the besiegers; but 
with its fall also went Guadix, the real capital of El 
Zagal, who was compelled to enter into capitulation 
with the Spaniards and accept a sum of money for his 
relinquished territory. 

It is thought that Christopher Columbus was with the 
court of Ferdinand, after Isabella arrived at Baza, and 
here met some monks from Jerusalem, who came to 



PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 133 

implore Ferdinand to clemency. "While the camp lay 
before Baza, a singular mission was received from the 
sultan of Eg3 7 pt, who had been solicited by the Moors 
of Granada to interpose in their behalf with the Spanish 
sovereigns. Two Franciscan friars, members of a re- 
ligious community in Palestine, were bearers of dis- 
patches, which, after remonstrating with the sovereigns 
on their persecution of the Moors, contrasted it with the 
protection uniformly extended by the sultan to the 
Christians in his dominions. The communication con- 
cluded with menacing a retaliation of similar severities 
on these latter, unless the sovereigns desisted from their 
hostilities toward Granada. 

' ' The menacing import of the sultan's communication, 
however, had no power to shake the purpose of Ferdi- 
nand and Isabella, who made answer that they had 
uniformly observed the same policy in regard to their 
Mahometan, as to their Christian subjects; but that 
they could no longer submit to seeing their ancient and 
rightful inheritance in the hands of strangers; and 
that, if these latter would consent to live under their 
rule as true and loyal subjects, they should receive the 
same paternal indulgence which had been shown their 
brethren." 

The Mahometans had good reason, not only subse- 
quently but even at that time, to distrust the "paternal 
indulgence" which these persecutors of heretics and 
Jews would bestow upon them. The fate of the Moors of 
Malaga was ever before them; yet they had to sur- 
render to the overpowering force and equipment of the 
Christians. 







134 PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 



Finally, "on ^December 4, 1489, Ferdinand and Isa- 
bella took possession of Baza, at the head of their 
legions, amid the ringing of bells, the peals of artil- 
lery, and all the other accompaniments of this tri- 
umphant ceremony; while the standard of the Cross, 
floating from the ancient battlements of the city, pro- 
claimed the triumph of the Christian arms. The brave 
alcayde, Cidi Yahye, experienced a different reception 
from that of the bold defender of Malaga (who was cast 
into chains). He was loaded with civilities and pres- 
ents; and these acts of civility so won upon his heart 
that he expressed a willingness to enter into their serv- 
ice. 'Isabella's compliments,' says the Arabian his- 
torian dryly, 'were paid in more substantial coin!' " 

The object of all these attentions was soon made 
manifest, when the Alcayde was prevailed upon to seek 
out his kinsman, ElZagal, and set before him the futil- 
ity of longer resistance to the Christian arms; a task 
which he fulfilled to the satisfaction of the Spanish 
sovereigns, for the old king sold out his provinces and 
w T ent over into Africa ; where, according to some, he 
was plundered, and left to die in obscurity. Having 
accomplished all this : having left no town or province 
outside Granada of importance, the sovereigns dis- 
banded ttieir army, on January 4, 1490. Nearly all 
that they had undertaken was at last accomplished; 
another campaign was to witness the end of Moorish 
domination in Spain. 

"Thus terminated the eighth year of the war of 
Granada, a year more glorious to Christian arms, and 



magmgmm max, 

PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 135 

more important in its results, than any of the preced- 
ing. During this period, an army of eighty thousand 
men had kept the field, amid all the inclemencies of 
winter, for more than seven months; an effort scarcely 
paralleled in these times, when both the amount of 
levies and period of service were on the limited scale 
adapted to the exigencies of feudal warfare. ... 
The history of this campaign is, indeed, most honorable 
to the courage, constancy, and thorough discipline of 
the Spanish soldier, and to the patriotism and general 
resources of the nation, but most of all to Isabella. 
She it was who fortified the timid counsels of the lead- 
ers, after their disasters, and encouraged them to per- 
severe in the siege." 

Meanwhile the Bey Chico, or Little King, Boabdil, 
at last sole sovereign in the Alhambra, though still in 
fact a vassal to Ferdinand, was quite uneasy on his 
throne^. He had had the misfortune to be taken captive 
by the Count of Cabra, while out on a foray, against 
his stipulations with the Spanish sovereigns, and thus 
doubly was their debtor for signal favors, which they 
would surety not fail to require requited a thousand- 
fold. 

He had sunk so low as to stipulate with his Christian 
opponents that when the cities of Baza, Almeria 
and Guadix should have been taken, he would also 
surrender his sovereignity over Granada. When, 
therefore, Isabella and Ferdinand were settled for the 
/inter in Cordova, they sent a reminder to Boabdil, 
ring by their grace, and last of the royal line to reign 



136 PL UCKING THE « ' POMEGRANA TE. > » 

in Spain, that the time had come when he should yield 
up his possessions and abandon Granada. 

He returned for answer that as to that matter he 
was not his own master, for if he should consent to 
capitulate thus, his life would be forfeited to his en- 
raged subjects. In short, he absolutely refused to 
move out of his palatial castle, with its battlemented 
walls, and as this decision he declared to be final, the 
Spanish sovereigns once more prepared for a campaign 
against the infidels; They had deprived the Moors of 
all but the now restricted province of Granada, it was 
isolated from all succor, and depended alone upon 
itself. Early in April, 1491, the anxious watchers about 
the Vega saw an immense host emerging from the passes 
through the hills and spread itself over the plains. 
Estimates vary as to the strength of this army, but 
fifty thousand h^s usually been accepted as the number 
oi soldiers, though Martyr, the historian, who was 
present in the ranks, asserts that there were eighty thou- 
sand. The force was large enough, however, to cause 
the Moorish hearts to sink, to convince the beleaguered 
Moslems that their time had come. They withdrew 
within their walls and kept up a show of defiance; but, 
though they made many a sally forth upon the plain, 
and many a time caused consternation for awhile 
witliin the Spanish ranks, yet theirs was a foredoomed 
cause; they fought fiercely, indeed, but without hope of 

success. 

The strongholds around the Vega, such as Illora and 
Moclin, had fallen to Ferdinand's artillery; their ruins 



I 



PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE '•" 137 

attest the fact to this day, for the places never recovered 
from the shock of this attack. Pitching their tents 
near the center of the plain, a few miles from Granada, 
the Spaniards kept at a safe distance from the Moorish 
artillery, yet annoyed the Moslems by repeated forays 
and constantly harassing their troops whenever they 
appeared. They ravaged all the country round, and 
the Moorish farmers and husbandmen had no opportu- 
nity for planting or reaping anything whatever. The 
summer passed away, and by its end the Moors found 
famine staring them in the face. They had not lost 
their ancient spirit, for they were so surpassingly skill- 
ful in single combat, that the King Ferdinand forbade 
his cavaliers to meet them, though they taunted his 
gallants to the verge of distraction. One notable ex- 
ception was the encounter between a giant Moor and a 
cavalier called Garcilasso, which resulted fortunately 
in victory for the Christian, who cut off the head of the 
infidel and presented it to his queen ; a very acceptable 
offering to that sovereign, it is said. At last, their 
camp having been nearly destroyed by flames, the 
Spaniards built huts of wood, and finally structures of 
stone, on its site, and thus arose what eventually be- 
came the city of Santa Fe, or of the Holy Faith; which 
stands to-da}^ a witness to the faith and gallantry of its 
builders. Seeing this apparent determination of the 
Spaniards to stay there all the coming winter, the be- 
sieged lost heart, indeed, and at last consented that 
their pusillanimous king should treat for capitulation. 
On the bank of the river Zenil is a small chapel, which 



138 PLUCKING THE "POMEGRANATE." 

marks the spot where weak Boabdil met the Spanish 
sovereigns and gave up the keys of Granada. The gate 
through which he made his exit, when going forth on 
that unwelcome errand, is still pointed out, above the 
Darro, in the Alhambra wall, and the gap in the hills 
by which he made his exit from the Vega; the latter 
still called by the romantic appellation of El ultimo 
suspiro del Mora — or "the Last Sigh of the Moor." 

"In a short time the large silver cross borne by 
Ferdinand throughout the crusade was seen sparkling 
in the sunbeams, while the standards of Castile and St. 
Iago waved triumphantly from the red towers of the 
Alhambra. At this glorious spectacle, the choir of the 
royal chapel broke forth into the solemn anthem of the 
Te Dewn, and the whole army, penetrated with deep 
emotion, prostrated themselves on their knees in adora- 
tion of the Lord of Hosts, who had at last granted the 
consummation of their wishes, in this last glorious 
triumph of the Cross." 



THE JEWS AND M00R8 EXPELLED. 139 



XL 

THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 

The Moors who surrendered at Granada were granted 
more liberal terms than those who held out so valiantly 
at Malaga, and who became slaves to the conquerors 
and lost all their possessions. They were to be allowed 
full enjoyment of their religion, to retain their mosques, 
to be judged by their own laws, a doubtful privilege, 
if they can be gauged by the administration of 
Moslem laws in modern times — to be allowed freedom 
of dress, the use of their native language, and the lib- 
erty of disposing of their properties as they saw fit. 
They were to be taxed the same as under their Moorish 
king and exempt from all taxation whatever for the 
space of three years; and when they should feel like 
leaving the country not only were they to be permitted 
to do so freely, but the Castilian sovereigns bound 
themselves to furnish, within three years from the 
signing of the capitulation, all vessels necessary to 
convey them across the Strait into Africa. The city, 
the castles, palace fortifications, artillery, and muni- 
tions of war, were to be delivered up at the time of 
surrender. These were the terms agreed to in Novem- 
ber, 1491, the commissioners from both sides meeting 



140 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 

secretly, at night, sometimes in Granada, and again 
without the walls, that the turbulent populace of 
Granada and the Alhambra should not get wind of the 
affair and precipitate trouble by premature action. 
Sixty days were to be allowed; but before that term 
was passed, Boabdil himself hastened the end, and, as 
already described, delivered the keys of his castle to 
Ferdinand and Isabella, on January 2, 1492. Boabdil, 
the Unlucky, as the Moors well called him — dis- 
appeared with his retinue over the hills to the west 
of Granada, going to take possession of a restricted 
territory in the mountains of the Alpiixarras. He was 
assigned a beautiful valley, fertile of soil and genial of 
climate, where he for a little while resided, if not in 
contentment, at least in peace. But four years later, 
King Ferdinand, having become doubtful of the policy 
of allowing one formerly so powerful to remain so near 
the scene of former glories, while many thousand Moors 
still lived in Spain, contrived to make a bargain with 
BoabdiPs vizier, by which it appeared that he accepted, 
in return for all his rights and territory, the sum of 
eighty thousand ducats of gold. "The shrewd Ferdi- 
nand does not appear to have made any question about 
the right of the vizier to make the sale, but paid the 
money with great secret exultation. The vizer, Yusef 
Aben Comixa, loaded the treasure upon mules, and 
departed joyfully for the Alpuxarras. He spread the 
money in triumph before Boabdil, and said: 'My lord, 
I have observed that as long as you live here you are 
exposed to constant peril. The Moors are rash and 




THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. Ul 

itable, they may make some sudden insurrection, 
elevate your standard as a pretext, and thus overwhelm 
you and your f rends with utter ruin. Your territory 
is sold; behold the price of it. With this gold you 
may buy far greater possessions in Africa, where you 
may live in honor and security.' 

"When Boabdil heard these words he burst into a 
sudden transport of rage, and, drawing his scimitar, 
would have sacrificed the officious Yusef on the spot, 
had not the attendants interfered and hurried the vizier 
from his presence. But Boabdil was not of a vindic- 
tive spirit, and his anger soon passed away. He saw 
that the evil was done, and he knew the spirit of the 
politic Ferdinand too well to hope that he would retract 
the bargain. Gathering together the money, therefore, 
and all his jewels and precious effects, he departed 
with his family and household for a port where a vessel 
had been carefully provided by the Castilian king to 
transport them to Africa. A crowd of his former sub- 
jects witnessed his embarkation. As the sails were un- 
furled and swelled to the breeze, and the vessel parted 
from the land, the spectators murmured: 'Farewell, 
Boabdil. Allah preserve thee, El Zogoybi— the Un- 
lucky One.' This unlucky appellation sank into the 
heart of the expatriated monarch, and tears dimmed his 
eyes as the snowy summits of the mountains of Gra- 
nada gradually faded from his view." 

The historian from whom the preceding paragraphs 
are quoted assumes Boabdil in truth to have been un- 
lucky, because, some thirty-four years after, he fell in 



142 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 

battle, fighting for the King of Fez, in Morocco; as the 
Arabian chronicler has it: "Dying in defense of the 
kingdom of another, after wanting spirit to die in de- 
fense of his own. " But it was a long time after the fall 
of Granada, and he had lived even beyond that event, 
a full generation of time; so that there can be no direct 
application of the epithet, "unlucky," on this account. 

The war against the Moors was ended, after they 
and their ancestors had been in Spain for seven hun- 
dred and eighty years, dating from the invasion of 
Africans and Arabs in the year 711. As a nation, dis- 
severed and fragmentary though it had been at times, 
there is no doubt they had reached the altitude of their 
greatest glory. They had carried their rude sort of 
civilization all over the peninsula, their vigorous na- 
tures had penetrated to its utmost confines; they had 
built cities and mosques like that of Cordova; palaces 
like those of Seville, Toledo and Granada; had recovered 
vast tracts of territory by irrigation and thorough culti- 
vation—had, in fact, made Spain to blossom like a gar- 
den. Their arts and architecture had been a revelation 
to Europe, and the monuments they erected stand to- 
day, unique of their kind, and all but imperishable evi- 
dences of their genius. 

But, doubtless, their mission as a people had been 
accomplished ; the work they had done still evidences 
their great capacity for absorbing the best that the age 
presented; but for several centuries preceding their 
conquest they had been at a standstill, so far as great 
works are concerned. They had fallen a prey to their 






THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 143 

own creations ; like the Romans, like the Goths, like 
every other nation mentioned in history — they had 
allowed luxury and sloth to overcome them, and be- 
came enervated and weak. And, while this had hap- 
pened to the Moors, the revivified Goths, in the persons 
of the Castilians, the Aragonese, the Catalans, and the 
other companion mountainers, had grown in strength 
and energy. Trained in the schools of adversity, nur- 
tured like the eagles in their mountain eyries, with 
thews and muscles of iron and natures toughened by 
long exercise, the men of Castile and Leon were invin- 
cible as warriors and not to be withstood. At the close 
of the Granadan war, probably, the Spaniards reached 
very near their highest point of energy as soldiers. 
Later, to be sure, under Charles L, and guided by the 
conquistador -es, such as Cortez, Pizarro and De Soto, 
they performed greater feats of emprise; but these were 
merely the surplus stores of energy accumulated in and 
by the Moorish wars. The long centuries of fighting 
had produced generations of invincible soldiers, who, 
on the plains of Italy, under the " Great Captain," 
Gonsalvo de Cordova, and at Pavia under Charles, in 
the Netherlands under the Duke of Alva, and in 
America under various leaders, carried Spain's national 
banner to the greatest altitudes. To the Moors, then, 
Spain owed her subsequent advancement as a world- 
power; to them she owed the training of her soldiers in 
feats of arms that surprised the French, the Venetians, 
aud the barbarous Indians of the Americas. And 
thus, indirectly, the Moors had benefited Spain ; as 



144 THE JEWS AND MOOHS EXPELLED. 

well as directly, through the impress of their Oriental 
civilization. 

Unfortunately King Ferdinand and his advisers did 
not take this broad and enlightened view of the situa- 
tion. They argued that inasmuch as the Moors were 
originall} T intruders, as they professed a faith diametric- 
ally opposed to that of their church, and were most 
obstinate in clinging to that faith—the belief of Islam 
— they were worthy only of extermination, unless they 
should profess conversion to the only true faith — that 
of Catholicism. Isabella and Ferdinand were more 
indebted to the Moors than they would admit, for but 
for them their kingdom, which now included every 
portion of Spain except the small province of Navarre, 
would never have been consolidated as it then was. 
Union as against the Moors meant for the various 
dukes, counts, and rulers over petty principalities, 
arraying themselves and their vast forces under the 
banner of Ferdinand; and once there, this politic mon- 
arch took good care they should not escape his sov- 
ereignty r . He had usurped the commanderships of the 
various great military orders, such as that of Alcantara, 
and Santiago, and he held to these powers with a tenac- 
ity of purpose not to be shaken. 

And how did he reward these people, who, though 
perhaps not of their own volition, had made his king- 
dom possible and his armies all but invincible? At the 
beginning, as we have seen, he preached good will and 
fraternal feeling, held out to the Moors the tempting 
possibilities of their becoming rich and great again, 






THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 145 



under his sovereignty, as under their former kings. 
But this mask was soon torn off, and to the astonished 
Moslems the real Ferdinand was soon revealed. Much 
has been written in extenuation of the acts of Isabella 
and Ferdinand, as though they were not possessed of 
independent personalities and capable of forming opin- 
ions for themselves. It has been claimed that, while 
their minds were alert and vigorous in the performance 
of their duties to the nation, while they could enact 
laws and promulgate edicts for the wise and beneficent 
government of their people — their Christian subjects — 
yet they w r ere not capable of independent action when 
it came to passing upon spiritual affairs. In these 
matters they surrendered themselves solely to the guid- 
ance of their so-called "spiritual advisers." And 
these "holy men,*' with an eye to the advancement of 
the church and at the same time their own emolument, 
invariably prescribed such drastic remedies as always 
accorded with the basest designs of the Castilian sov- 
ereigns. That is, they found for them excuses for 
harrying a subject people so that they should rise in re- 
bellion and thus the king have an excuse for suppress- 
ing them with vigor and cruelty, of confiscating their 
properties, and sending them as exiles out of the king- 
dom. And this is what soon happened to the Moors. 
At first they were*quiet and peaceable, in their re- 
stricted domains. They saw without openly expressed 
resentment the Christians placed in possession of their 
richest fields and provinces, themselves turned out of 
the homes where their ancestors had dwelt for centuries, 



146 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED, 

and that some Spanish leader might enjoy the fruits of 
their labors; they saw their cities occupied and their 
ports in the hands of aliens; they were reduced from 
affluence to comparative poverty; yet they did not 
rebel, until the persistent emissaries of the church tried 
to force them to adopt the faith of their conquerors. 
This had been expressly stipulated : that they should 
be permitted the freedom of their own religion, and to 
retain their native speech, the Arabs, their peculiar 
costume, etc. But not long were they to be left thus 
unmolested. A few years after the fall of Granada 
some so-called missionaries penetrated to the mountain 
retreats of the African Moors and attempted by force to 
make them accept the Christian religion, as the Span- 
iards interpreted it. A mob was soon gathered in one 
of the Moorish villages, and the invaders were stoned 
to death. This news arriving at the Castilian court, 
Ferdinand ordered one of his valiant commanders to go 
into the mountains and put down what he styled a re- 
bellion. This commander, a man of renown, Alonzo 
de Aguilar, when informed as to the force that Ferdi- 
nand purposed sending with him, demurred, saying: 
"When a man is dead, we send four men into his house 
to bring forth his body. We are now sent to chastise 
these Moors, who are alive, vigorous in open rebellion, 
and ensconced in their castles; yet they do not give us 
man to man!" 

Still, being an old soldier, and accustomed to obey, 
he set forth with his inadqeuate force to punish the 
Moors for their contumacy in resisting the putting of 



THE JEWS AND MOOES EXPELLED. 147 

bonds upon them which the Spaniards had expressly 
contracted with them should not be applied. 

Never were the violators of a sacred treaty more 
effectually punished, though in the persons of their 
emissaries, •while the real criminals — Isabella, Ferdi- 
nand, and the bigoted priests and bishops — were safe 
within their castles and palaces. The valiant Don 
Alonzo de Aguilar (the Eagle) set out with his small 
but chosen band of Christian knights, after offer- 
ing up prayers to all the saints of Spain for success. 
But they evidently minded not the Spanish proverb 
which says: "If God is against jou, the saints are no 
use!" for they trusted much in their prestige, and held 
the Moors in contempt. Among the Moors, however, 
in this particular locality in the mountain passes of the 
Sierra Vermeja, down near the coast not far from 
Gibraltar, were many fierce Africans known as Gau- 
dule3, commanded by a master spirit among them, one 
El Feri of Ben Estepar. This man of warlike instincts 
and wonderful sagacity at once he heard the Christians 
were coming to chastise him and his people, assembled 
them together and led them to an inaccessible spot of 
level land inclosed between mountain peaks, sur- 
rounded on every side by crags and precipices. Here 
he resolved to sell his life and the lives of his compan- 
ions, their wives, mothers, children, as dearly as possi- 
ble, and to make the Spaniards pay heavily for what- 
ever advantage they gained. At first the "Christians" 
had it all their own way; in one of their forays they 
captured a Moorish camp, as there were many women 









148 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED, 

and children in it, adorned with bracelets and anklets 
of gold, etc., they halted in midcareer of conquest to 
despoil them, instead of pursuing the flying Moors. 
The cries of their wives and children coming to their 
ears, the Moorish soldiers were stung to make a rally 
against their opponents, and came back at them so 
vigorously that the Christian ranks were tertibly deci- 
mated. Darkness came on, and still they were fight- 
ing amongst the crags, many of the Spanish soldiers 
being killed by falling over precipices, and many more 
by the rocks rolled upon them from the summits of the 
acclivities. The culmination came when the redoubta- 
ble chief of the Christian forces, brave Don Alonzo, 
was himself attacked by the Moorish leader, El Feri of 
Ben Estepar. Long and fierce was the combat, and 
many were the deep wounds given and returned; but 
finally Don Alonzo sank beneath the savage attack of 
his adversary, and fell dead among the rocks. All his 
companions had perished, and lamentable was the 
plight of the few who had been left to guard the camp 
at the foot of the mountains. They escaped to Granada, 
where Ferdinand was awaiting their victorious return; 
and only to the heroic exertions of the rear guard, 
under the Count de Cifuentes, was it due that any 
escaped from that mountain region at all. The king 
then marched with a powerful force to the mountain 
region of which picturesque Ronda is the center, 
soon put an end to the rebellion. The most contuma- 
cious of the Moors were sold into slavery, some ransomed 
themselves by parting with all their possessions, and 



THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 149 

others were sent over to Africa. The rebels paid 
dearly for this little war, and for the two or three hun- 
dred Christians they slew. on the mountains of the 
Sierra Vermeja, many thousand Moors were made to 
feel the weight of woe that King Ferdinand knew so 
well how to bring down upon those who opposed him 
and his church. 

As against the Moorish subjects of his kingdom 
Ferdinand had some show of reason for administering: 
punishment, even of expulsion from the country where 
they and their ancestors had lived for many genera- 
tions; but the real animus of this "Catholic" sovereign 
and his " humane and gentle" consort was conspicu- 
ously displayed in the persecution of another people 
who had never rebelled, or fought against them — the 
innocent and peace-loving Jews. The real and only 
reason for this persecution was their unexampled pros- 
perity, which had for many years excited the jealousy 
of their Christian neighbors, and brought down upon 
them at last the righteous vengeance of the Christian 
sovereigns. They had been persecuted in the time of 
the Goths, and it was alleged against them, and per- 
haps with a show of truth, they had aided in the 
African invasion of the Peninsula, more than seven 
hundred years before, or at the very first. 

It was long ago pointed out — in fact, became suffi- 
ciently evident in the time of these same sovereigns — 
that the unwarranted decimation of the population of 
Spain, through the acts of Isabella and Ferdinand, and 
later through those of their great-grandson Philip II. , 




150 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 



and yet later through those of his son, Philip III., 
would eventually react upon the country itself. By 
these acts, vast tracts of hitherto cultivated and culti- 
vable lands became barren and nonproductive; looms 
and silk factories, which brought prosperity and gain 
to whole communities, were rendered silent and in- 
operative; but they allowed envy and bigotry to blind 
them to what — if the accounts of their apologists like 
Prescott and Irving be true — their "great and enlight- 
ened minds" must have well perceived would be the 
baneful results of their short-sighted policies. 

It was within three months after receiving the sur- 
render of Granada, and when their bosoms were swollen 
with pride and their elation at the great event un- 
bounded, that these most Catholic sovereigns signed 
the fateful edict of expulsion against the Jews. Their 
apologists have claimed many mitigating circum- 
stances, such as the well-known avarice of the Israel- 
ites, their grasping and mercenary natures, their 
cowardly policy of shirking all their duties as defend- 
ers of the country of their adoption against a common 
enemy, and finally, the persistence with which they 
stuck to their ancient religion. The commentators 
also cite their attempts to apostatize such of the 
Christians as they could reach ; but this is so contrary 
to their universal practice that no one will for a mo- 
ment entertain it; neither the alleged crucifixion of 
Christian children, which charge was brought against 
them by the overzealous "familiars" of the Inquisi- 
tion. The bare and naked truth was that they had 



THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 151 

accumulated great wealth, and this wealth was desired, 
first by the church, and secondly by the crown. Be- 
hind religion and its imperative demands, the crown 
shielded itself; and the infamous inquisitors, carried 
away by their bigotry and churchly zeal, were only too 
willing to accept the responsibilty. 

"With a eye single to thy glory," King Ferdinand 
would have declared to the Lord, if he had been called 
upon to explain his persecution of these prosperous sub- 
jects whom he so unmercifully banished from his king- 
dom. It may be explained either way; but we know 
now, in view of what has since happened to Spain, that 
it was the blindness of bigotry, and not the singleness 
of purpose of one called to serve the Lord, that brought 
about this act of expulsion. The edict was signed on 
March 30, 1492, and the Jews given but four months 
in which to dispose of their properties of what- 
ever character and leave the country. The most active 
instrument of this deportation of a whole body of peo- 
ple whose only crime was that of being prosperous, 
was the inquisitor general, Torquemada, whose memory 
has been handed down to universal execration and 
obloquy. The extent to which he dominated the king 
and queen is shown 4>y his audacity in bursting into 
their private apartment one day, after the more wealthy 
of the Jews had raised a gift of thirty -thousand ducats, 
hoping thereby to avert the threatened act of barbarity. 
"Drawing forth a crucifix from beneath his mantle, he 
held it up, exclaiming: ; Judas Iscariot sold his Master 
for thirty pieces of silver. Your highnesses would sell 
him anew for thirty thousand; here He is, take Him 
and barter Him away!' So saying the frantic priest 
threw the crucifix on the table and left the apartment." 
Even the defender of these sovereigns cannot excuse 
this fiendish act ; but he says meekly : "The sovereigns, 



152 THE JEWS AND MOORS EXPELLED. 

instead of chastising this presumption, or despising it 
as a mere freak of insanity, were overawed by it. 
Neither Ferdinand nor Isabella, had they been left to 
the unbiassed dictates of their own reason, could have 
sanctioned for a moment so impolitic a measure, which 
involved the loss of the most skillful portion of their 
subjects." Which, if true, shows them to have been 
either fools or weaklings; probably both foolish and 
weak. 



. 



ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 153 



XII. 

ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 

The short-sighted, narrow-minded policy of the 
panish sovereigns, which deprived their nation of a 
body of people remarkably industrious and frugal, was 
replete with horrors which were not confined to Spain. 
The number of Jews thus expelled was variously esti- 
mated at from one hundred and sixty thousand to eight 
hundred thousand ; but probably it amounted to about 
two hundred thousand. Compelled to emigrate at short 
notice, they carried the plague and pestilence to Italy 
and other countries, owing to their squalor and the con- 
dition to which they were brought by poverty and star- 
vation. The church and people of Spain united in 
plundering these poor victims of persecution, the former 
by interdicting any assistance to them from the Chris- 
tians, and the latter quarreling over the spoils. It is 
recorded that an e} 7 ewitness said he had seen a vine- 
yard traded for a suit of clothes, and a house exchanged 
for an ass. In Africa, the Jews were attacked by 
Bedouin robbers, who stripped them of the little left by 
the Spaniards, and even ripped open their bodies to 
obtainrthe gold which many of them were said to have 
swallowed! Another eyewitness of this event, a 
Genoese, says: "No one could behold the sufferings of 
the Jewish exiles unmoved. A great number perished 
of hunger, especially those of tender years. Mothers, 
with scarcely strength to support themselves, carried 
their famished infants in their arms and died with 



154 ISABELLA AX J) COLUMBUS. 

thern. Many fell victims to the cold, others to intense 
thirst, while the unaccustomed distresses incident to a 
sea voyage aggravated their maladies." 

"I will not enlarge on the cruelty and the avarice of 
the ship masters who transported them from Spain. 
Some were murdered to gratify their cupidity, others 
forced to sell their children for the expense of the pas- 
sage. . . . One might have taken them for specters, 
so emaciated were they, so cadaverous in their aspect, 
and with eyes so sunken; they differed in nothing from 
the dead, except in the power of motion, which indeed 
they scarcely retained. Many fainted and expired on 
the mole, which, being completely surrounded by the 
sea, was the only quarter vouchsafed to the wretched 
emigrants. The infection bred by such a swarm of 
dead and dying persons was not at once perceived, but, 
when the winter broke up, ulcers began to make their 
appearance, and the malady, which for a long time 
lurked in the city (Genoa) broke out into the plague the 
following year." 

One might be disposed to treat these stories with in- 
credulity, but for such scenes as we know occurred near 
our own shores, quite recently in Cuba, when the bar- 
barous Weyler starved and murdered by thousands the 
unfortunate * ' reconcentrados. ' ' And these Cuban vic- 
tims of Spanish cruelty were driven to their graves 
near the end of the enlightened nineteenth century, and 
on the Spanish throne sat a youth of tender years, the 
child of a queen regent supposed to have a Mothers lov- 
ing regard for humanity, and who had asked the sympa- 
thies of the world for her young son in his afflicting 
situation! She bad asked these sympathies for him, in 
the possibility that he might •lose the throne of his an- 
cestors; yet she uttered no word of sympathy for the 
starving "reconcentrados," and did nothing to amelio- 






ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 155 



rate their heart-rending condition. This circumstance 
shows us that the Spanish policy is unchanged — that 
while Isabella and Ferdinand, with cold and cruel cal- 
culation, drove their subjects to endure miseries incal- 
culably distressing — the nineteenth-century queen and 
her advisers could also look calmly on while other 
thousands of their colonial peoples were being oppressed 
and even starved to death by their accredited agents in 
Cuba! 

But, from these horrors, which a glance of retrospec- 
tion unites across the intervening centuries, let us turn 
now to a more attractive picture — a picture which 
proved, unfortunately, but the prelude to other scenes 
upon the panoramic canvas of Spain's cruelties — but 
which was at the time refreshing in its contrast to the 
events amid which it was conceived. We allude to the 
conception of that vast undertaking by Christopher 
Columbus — the credit for which has often been usurped 
by the sovereigns of Spain — but whose share in it was 
merely fortuitous and unpremediated. 

It would seem that all the great events which were 
to bring Spain prominently before the world were now 
to focus upon the vega of Granada, and cluster around 
the fall of that city of the Moors. The world is, of 
course, familiar with the career of Columbus prior to 
his arrival in Spain; with the circumstances of his 
birth at Genoa, his youthful adventures, his final con- 
viction that he could reach another and western conti- 
nent merely by sailing westerly across the Atlantic 
Ocean; and with his years of wanderings from court to 
court, seeking some enlightened monarch to support his 
scheme with money and men, and furnish him with a 
ileet for a voyage. It was by the merest accident that 
lie had not succeeded with the King of Portugal, or 
that his brother Bartholomew had not interested the 



156 ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 

King of England ; but, like the sovereigns of Spain, 
they were too deeply committed to what they considered 
more weighty affairs, and turned him aside with scant 
courtesy. Just why Columbus was so much the more 
persistent with Ferdinand and Isabella than with the 
other rulers of continental Europe has never been quite 
satisfactorily explained , but it was probably because of 
their recently acquired prominence as defenders of the 
faith and conquerors of the pagan and infidel. They, 
also, fed him with promises, kept him continually on 
the qui vive, expecting favors at some time in the near 
future ; and thus he continually waited upon them, a 
hanger-on at court, a lackey in attendance on* the out- 
skirts of their camps, and an unwilling witness of their 
wars, through the long period when they were engaged 
in the conquest of Granada. Now and again they 
would appoint a commission to inquire into the merits 
of his scheme; and we well know the results: that at 
Salamanca it was reported as chimerical, that the queen 
finally refused to entertain him longer as a royal de- 
pendent, and that in disgust Columbus concluded to 
shake the dust of Spain from his feet and leave again 
for Portugal. His detention in Spain, when he had 
finally made up his mind to leave it forever, was but 
one in the series of fortuitous occurrences that gave to 
this country the glory of having discovered America. 
To those who believe, as Isabella and Ferdinand be- 
lieved, and probably as Columbus himself believed — 
that an all- wise Providence made them the defenders 
of their religion, and the "saviors" of their country, it 
yet seems somewhat inexplicable that He should have 
granted to these persecutors of hundreds of thousands 
of human beings, the further control over the destinies 
of millions more, as yet unknown to Europe, and still 
rejoicing in primitive freedom. According to the state- 



ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 157 

3ents of their own historians, the Spaniards murdered 
millions of the American aborigines, and carried with 
the Cross also the sword, the rack, the fire and gibbet, 
all the horrors, in fact, Mi the Inquisition. 

But, to return to o*r pursuit of Columbus, as he 
essayed a departure from Spain and a last appeal to the 
Portuguese king. He sought the coast, as we know, 
and as night overtook him near a monastery at which 
dwelt a prior once confessor to the queen, he craved 
shelter and refreshment there. He was invited to enter 
and stay for the night, and the prior, a learned man for 
those times, when he had engaged his guest in conver- 
sation, saw that it was no ordinary man he had with 
him then. He became interested, in short, and after his 
sympathies were aroused he voluntered to go himself to 
Granada and intercede with the queen. True to his 
promise, he went, and returned on a certain day, bring- 
ing back with him the royal command for Columbus to 
repair yet again to the court, and with money and 
raiment for the journey. Complying with this order, 
though with reluctance, Columbus at last arrived at 
Isabella's tent, which was pitched upon the site of a 
square yet pointed out in the present city of Santa Fe. 
An interview was accorded the importunate Columbus, 
but as he had abated no whit of his original and seem- 
ingly preposterous terms, it was concluded without any 
concession from Isabella. Convinced at last that his 
demands were not to be complied with, Columbus set 
out on his return to the convent of La Rabida, bent 
upon taking the voyage to foreign shores. But when 
he had reached a point only a few leagues distant from 
Santa Fe, at the bridge of Pines, he was overtaken by 
the queen's messenger, with the announcement that his 
scheme would be supported by her and that vessels and 
men would be furnished him for the voyage across the 



158 ISABELLA AXD COLUMB 

Atlantic in pursuit of his quest for the undiscovered 
land. Returning with the messenger, Columbus was 
well received, but requested to wait the outcome of the 
negotiations then pending for the surrender of Granada. 
These dragged along into the month of January, but, 
after receiving the capitulation of Granada and the 
keys of the city from Boabdil, and after signing the 
decree of expulsion for the Jews, at last, on April 17, 
1492, the contract was entered into between Columbus 
and the queen, in behalf of the crown of Castile. Ac- 
cording to her biographer, Isabella "contemplated the 
proposals of Columbus in their true light; and, refus- 
ing to hearken any longer to the suggestions of cold and 
timid counsellors, she gave way to the natural impulses 
of her own noble and generous heart ; 'I will assume 
the undertaking,' she said, 'for my own crown of Cas- 
tile, and am quite ready to pawn my jewels to defray 
the expenses of it, if the funds in the treasury shall be 
found inadequate.' The treasury had been reduced to 
the lowest ebb by the late war; but the receiver, St. 
Angel, advanced the sums required from the Aragonese 
revenues deposited in his hands. Aragon, however, 
was not considered as adventuring in the expedition, 
the charges and emoluments of which were reserved ex- 
clusively for Castile." So it seems that, after all, the 
queen was not called upon to defray the expenses of the 
undertaking, nor did she pawn her jewels — as many 
historians have asserted. She merely took to herself 
the credit of the adventure, Ferdinand paid the bills, 
and her unfortunate subjects at Palos were impressed 
for the voyage. Never, since the world began, did a 
sovereign of any country gain greater credit on such 
small basis of accomplishment. But the fact remains 
that Columbus at last gained his object through her 
final acquiescence in his plans, that the money v 



ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS, 159 

grudgingly furnished for the expedition, and the royal 
order went forth for the equipment and assembling of a 
small fleet at Palos, consisting of two insignificant 
caravals or open boats with decks and sails, and a 
"ship," Santa Maria, of larger dimensions. Mr. 
Prescott says the proposed expedition was "unpopu- 
lar." which is not to be wondered at, when it is con- 
sidered what were the objects of it: to sail westward a 
greater distance than had ever yet been undertaken, 
upon an entirely unknown ocean, and under a naviga- 
tor whose abilities were unproved and who was looked 
upon as more of a crazy enthusiast than a sailor! 

These men of Palos had children and wives, families 
and friends, whom they were not inclined to leave for- 
ever — as it seemed to them likely — and their co-opera- 
tion was finally obtained only by a royal ordinance, 
promising protection from criminal prosecution to all 
who should embark in the adventure, until two months 
after their return. It would seem, indeed, that either 
the sailors of Palos were great criminals or great idiots, 
to bo frightened into this perilous venture, and thus 
jumping out of the frying-pan into the fire. From 
the evidences afforded by the chronicles, it would 
appear that many of these first sailors to set forth with 
Columbus had embarked in order to escape certain 
prosecution at home, and thus may be ranked as crim- 
inals in the eyes of the law. We know that many, if 
not the most, of those who joined subsequent expedi- 
tions were jailbirds and criminals, whom to get rid of 
Spain was ready to promise any prospective reward ; 
for their action in the numerous murders and massacres 
that followed among the natives, proves this. 

However, we would not seek to detract from their 
merits, nor to disparage their deeds; but the sequel 
shows that this first voyage which resulted in the dis- 










160 ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS, 



eovery of America might have been intrusted to better 
hands. We have, in the first place, a king and queen 
as patrons whose hands were d} T ed in the blood of their 
inoffensive subjects; a commander whose subsequent 
acts show him to have been mercenary and cruel, inso- 
much that he turned over the natives of. America who 
came within his jurisdiction to massacre and rapine; 
and his crew was mainly composed of the offscourings 
of Palos. 

And this was the expedition which, in the inscruta- 
ble mystery of Providence, was allowed to bring to the 
view of civilization the islands and continents of a 
hemisphere hitherto unknown to Europe. We cannot 
but admire the constancy to an ideal and the energy of 
purpose displayed by Columbus; and above all is dis- 
played in letters of light the heroic endeavors of'his two 
companion commanders, the Pinzones, who were in 
charge of the decked caravels, Nina and Pinta. 

Such expedition was used that within less than four 
months from the signing of the " capitulation" between 
Columbus and the sovereigns, the little fleet was ready 
to sail, and on August 3, 1492, set out on its long and 
perilous voyage. 

Guided by a master mind, and yet in a measure for- 
tuitously, the three frail vessels finally sighted land (as 
all the world knows) at one of the islands in the Baha- 
mas, on October 12, 1492, a date made memorable by 
this circumstance. The discovery of other islands of 
this chain, and at last that of Cuba, followed in due 
course, then Hayti or Hispaniola, on the north coast of 
which, a year later, the first city was founded b} r Co- 
lumbus. By running on a reef off the coast of Hayti, 
the flagship Santa Maria was lost, and to relieve 
the congested condition of the smaller vessels, about 
forty mariners were left near the scene of shipwreck in 



ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS, 161 

charge of a small fort which was erected and called 
Navidad. Pursuing his course with the two caravals, 
Columbus at last, in terrible storms and adverse winds, 
finally arrived at Lisbon, whence he reached Palos, and 
thence made a triumphal journey across Spain to Bar 
celona, where the royal court was then temporarily 
established. 

The sight of the strange birds, the red Indians, tho 
specimens of plants, and above all the gold, in dust and 
nuggets, excited the greatest interest, not alone in th9 
sovereigns, but in the people at large, so that, after his 
truly royal reception, in which he was accorded the- 
highest honors, and permitted to sit in the presence of 
the king and queen, another voyage was soon resolved 
upon. What a contrast to the first little trio of small 
and unseaworthy boats, with their meager crews, was 
this second fleet, which set sail from Cadiz in 1493, 
with seventeen vessels, and more than twelve hundred 
adventurers and sailors. Here was an opportunity for 
the soldiers so recently released from their services 
against the infidels, to gain fresh glories in new fields, 
and to recoup the fortunes some of them had lost dur- 
ing their adventures; or rather to gain the fortunes 
they had never acquired, so long as they remained at 
home. Without going into particulars, we may notice 
that other islands were discovered on this second voy- 
age, and that on their arrival at Navidad the Spaniards 
found that all those who had been left there were mas- 
sacred. A just revenge had been taken by the innocent 
natives for their brutality and licentiousness, for they 
had respected neither youth nor age and had ravished 
the wives and daughters of prominent chiefs, without 
regard to their protests. Thus the foundations of the 
city Columbus soon after set about to build were laid 
in blood ; and this was but the prelude to yet more ter- 



1(32 ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS, 

rible scenes, in which the natives were murdered on 
most trivial pretexts, such as to ascertain if their skulls 
were hard enough to resist the blow from a two-handed 
sword, etc. JSTot many years had passed before nearly 
all the native Indians were either murdered or driven 
to commit suicide to escape the cruelties of the Span- 
iards. Not only in Hispaniola, discovered on his first 
voyage and settled on his second, by Columbus, but in 
all the islands discovered on his two subsequent voy- 
ages. 

Of one thing (it must have been shown in these 
*pages) we cannot accuse the Spaniards, and that is of 
inconsistency. Ever since the caravals of Columbus 
first brought to view the isles of the Bahamas and the 
coast of Cuba, in 1492, Spain has consistently adhered 
to the policy of fire and the sword, of outrage and ex- 
termination, inaugurated by the sovereigns of Spain, 
Ferdinand and Isabella, and carried out by the adven- 
turer from Genoa, Christopher Columbus. . . . And 
this is said without seeking in any manner to detract 
from the merits of the "Great Navigator," who, even if 
he were not humane and generous, was persistent and 
courageous. But a persistent, and even a sincere, man 
may be mean, and this quality of meanness w r as particu- 
larly shown when Columbus denied to that bumble 
sailor, who first saw the light ashore in Guanahani, the 
reward he had promised, and claimed it himself. It is 
but a matter of history and can be verified, that Colum- 
bus set the pace followed by Cortez in Mexico, by 
Pizarro in Peru, by the long list of fiends in the guise 
of men, who followed after him, by all that horde of 
pirates and adventurers who pursued the lines of con- 
quest laid down by him on that first voyage to America. 
Columbus started out hampered by his obligations to 
the Queen of Castile : he must return to her a propor- 




ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 163 

tionate share of the expense of the expedition ; he was 
indebted to her for prospective honors and privileges; 
and he was determined to have gold, at whatever cost, 
at whatever sacrifice of lives and property of the inno- 
cent Indians he had found in possession of the New 
World. 

This will explain the attitude of the Spaniards, from 
the very outset, toward the natives found in the New 
World. It was that of bandits, robbers, freebooters, 
who must depend upon their swords for reimbursement 
for ships, munitions, provisions, and their time ex- 
pended in exploration. The first encounter in which 
American blood was shed by Europeans-was in the Bay 
of Samana, on the north coast of San Domingo, just 
prior to the departure of Columbus on his return from 
his first voyage to Spain ; and the next year, having re- 
turned to the scenes of his adventures here, he founded 
the city of Isabella and from thence made incursions 
into the interior of Hispaniola, his covetous nature in- 
flamed by the reports of great gold fields in that region. 
These incursions brought about conflict with the 
Indians of tbe interior, and in the battles that followed, 
between these mail-clad Spaniards with their guns and 
swords, and the unarmed natives with their naked 
bodies and primitive weapons, many thousands were 
slain, and the work of extermination well begun. 

Before the middle of the next century, says the 
Spanish historian and religious writer, Bishop Las 
Casas, or in less than sixty years, the aboriginal inhab- 
itants of Hayti and San Domingo had been swept from 
the face of the earth. Their place for awhile was sup- 
plied by importations from the Bahamas, who were at 
first overlooked as the natives there had little gold ; but 
finally those isles also were depopulated. Then came 
Cuba's turn to contribute to the enrichment of the con- 




• pp ' : 



104 ISABELLA AND COLUMBUS. 



querors. For some fifteen years or so she had been left 
unnoticed, while the mines of Hayti were being ex- 
ploited ; but as they began to fail, adventurers sailed 
from the sister isle of San Domingo and the first settle- 
ment was founded, in 1511. In two years the Span- 
iards were most firmly fixed, and the Indians of Cuba 
all reduced to a state of servitude. All, that is, that 
had not been murdered* or driven to suicide. From the 
Spanish historians, be it remembered, we have the con- 
demnation of the Spaniards themselves. Some of 
these, like the good and great Bishop Las Casas, do not 
hesitate to arraign their countrymen for their cruelties; 
in their pages may be found the recital of deeds that 
make the blood run cold in the mere reading of them. 
Nearly four centuries have passed (to be sure), since 
these. deeds were perpetuated; it is three hundred and 
fifty years since the last of the Indians were extermi- 
nated; but distance in point of time does not lessen the 
iniquity of the offense; no terms that we can apply will 
lessen the enormity of their misdeeds! 






THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 

Having anticipated by a few years the natural 
sequence of events in following the fortunes of Colum- 
bus, we will return to Spain and gather, up the threads 
we have for the moment dropped. It is well know T n 
that the ultimate outcome of the voyages of Columbus, 
though he had as he thought carefully anticipated every 
exigency, and secured to himself and his heirs every 
prospective honor and emolument, was disastrous to 
him and to his fortunes. On his third voyage to His- 
paniola he was arrested by one Boabdilla and sent back 
to Spain in irons; and it mattered not that Isabella 
sought to console him; he had incurred the envy and 
ill-will of the Spaniards by his unexampled successes, 
and, as a foreigner, was looked upon with hatred and 
contempt. Securing, after a long period of waiting, the 
command of another expedition, he made that disas- 
trous voyage which resulted in his shipwreck on the 
coast of Jamaica, and a year of terrible privations, only 
ended to be again sent back home broken and dejected, 
his health shattered and fortunes also wrecked. After 
a few years more of neglect and contumely, he finally 
died, in the year 1506, at Valladolid, whence, by the 
way of Seville, his remains were sent to San Domingo 
and interred in the great cathedral there. Even after 
death he was denied perfect rest, for a hundred years 
ago his sepulcher was sought and the supposed remains 
of Christopher Columbus taken to Havana. This 






166 THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 

claim of Cuba to final possession of the ashes of Colum- 
bus was disputed by the inhabitants of San Domingo, 
but in 1898 those taken to Havana were again trans- 
ported, this time back to Spain, where they were given 
supulture in Seville. 

As to the rewards of Columbus, his great talents and 
his ignoble ambitions, let the more talented historians 
decide; also let them pass judgment on the great abili- 
ties and character of Queen Isabella, who preceded her 
illustrious subject to the grave by two years, The dis- 
coveries of Columbus seeming to put in peril the claims 
of the Portuguese, the influence of the Spanish court 
finally secured the promulgation of a "bull" from Pope 
Alexander the Sixth, by which, finally (through a series 
of bulls, rather) the line of demarcation between the 
Spanish and Portuguese possessions and discoveries was 
fixed, respectively west and east of an imaginary me- 
ridian located three hundred and seventy leagues to the 
westward of the Cape de Verd Islands. The Spaniards 
were granted exclusive possession and right of naviga- 
tion westward of this line, and the Portuguese east- 
ward, giving each ample opportunity for development, 
and finally securing to the latter the vast empire of 
Brazil. All this was arranged by the treaty of Tor- 
desillas, on June 7, 1494, ratified by Spain and Portu- 
gal the same year. 

Immediately after the return of Columbus from his 
first voyage, a board was established for the performance 
of work connected with the new discoveries, for the devel- 
opment of the regions and the management of all affairs 
pertaining to them, and at the head was placed an ec- 
clesiastic high in favor, Juan de Fonseca, the arch- 
deacon of Seville. Thus the church managed to secure 
a grip on the newly-found territories which it never re- 
laxed, and through the well-known India House, or 







THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 167 

Casa de la Contratacdeion las lndias all business of 
whatever nature was conducted. This house became 
great and powerful, and therein was established the 
vast army of officials who have for centuries dominated 
colonial affairs, and whose influence and whose corrup- 
tions have lasted to the present time. 

Isabella's concern for the spiritual welfare of 
her recently-acquired subjects, the natives of the 
West Indies, prompted her to have those brought 
to Spain by Columbus at once baptized into the 
Christian faith, "as the first fruits of the Gentiles," 
and to send with the second expedition a body of 
ecclesiastics, twelve in number, and among them 
the great Las Casas, who afterwards became such 
a thorn in the flesh to the Spaniards themselves, and to 
whom we owe much that is known respecting the in- 
human treatment of the natives at the hands of the bar- 
barous Europeans. While it may be true that Las 
Casas and a few of his coadjutors exerted themselves in 
behalf of the persecuted aborigines, yet it is undoubt- 
edly true that they did not so much consider their 
bodily welfare as their possible conversion into good 
Catholics. They were treated with every species of 
inhumanity that the fiendish desires of their conquerors 
could conceive, and in the end Las Casas relinquished 
in despair his benevolent intentions of doing them good 
and rescuing them from the grasp of the avaricious con- 
qaistadores and settlers. Time and again, it is re- 
corded, did Isabella intercede and command the return 
and release of Indians enslaved by her representatives 
in the West Indies; but the encomiendas and reparta- 
mientos went on just the same, until the entire body of 
people sank under their accumulated misfortunes and 
expired. 

In Spain, meanwhile, perhaps no more noteworthy 



168 THE FEU ITS OF VICTORY. 

event had occurred than the rise to power of Ximencs, 
who, from a poor and obscure monk, Queen Isabella, 
with that perspicacity for discovering inherent genius 
in her servants, had raised to the archbishopric of 
Toledo. At first reluctant to receive such great honor, 
hardly less than second in real possession of power to 
that exercised by the sovereigns themselves, Ximenes 
had combated the wishes of the queen. Her insistence 
also shows her firm will, inasmuch as the position was 
coveted by King Ferdinand for one of his "natural" 
sons; but who had to be content with some more hum- 
ble office. But Ximenes, when once in power, was 
somebody to be reckoned with, and, though never lack- 
ing in devotion to the crown, yet held his own on all 
occasions. It is related that on one occasion he ha- 
rangued the queen severely for some appointment which 
did not meet his approval, and she indignantly asked 
him if he was in his senses, and knew whom he was 
thus addressing; when he replied: "I am in my 
senses, and know very well whom I am speaking to — 
the Queen of Castile, a mere handful of dust like 
myself!" Which was undoubtedly the truth, though 
not very palatable to the queen. 

Cardinal Ximenes (to give him the title later be- 
stowed upon him by the pope), was a force not to be 
disregarded in a review of the reign of Isabella and 
Ferdinand; whether that force was always exerted for 
good, or for evil,, let the intelligent reader decide. Go- 
ing with the court to Granada, in the year 1499, and 
finding the Moors there quite content under the com- 
paratively mild sway of the Archbishop Talavera, he 
was moved to attempt the conversion of the Moorish 
alfalquis, or Mussulman doctors, and their adherents to 
the Christian faith, and, partly by presents, and partly 
by argument, brought over a large number to his side. 




. 



THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 169 



This was not agreeable to the majority of the Moors, 
who took an occasion to retaliate, one day, when they 
had some of his emissaries at a disadvantage, using 
the time-honored Christian arguments of force so suc- 
cessfully that several of them were killed. They had 
flocked to his preaching by thousands, when the labor 
of sprinkling them with the holy water of baptism was 
so extensive that it was done with a mop, which "was 
twirled over the head of the multitude." 

It was in this manner that the Moors, some say to the 
number of fifty thousand, were made into Christian 
proselytes, and became those despised people afterward 
known as Moriscos, hated alike by Moslems and Chris- 
tians. Although Ximenes had precipitated a conflict 
between the Moors who held out against this wholesale 
conversion from their ancient religion to the other, and 
many lives were lost on- both sides, yet he $£>uld point 
with pride to the fifty thousand nominal converts to the 
Christian faith, and this made ample amends in the 
eyes of the queen. Ferdinand, however, took occasion 
to taunt Isabella with the rash precipitancy of her arch- 
bishop, and to point out how much better it would have 
been had she listened to his pleadings and given the 
primacy to his son. But as it was his son, and not 
hers, he had urged for the position, this fact may have 
had something to do with her refusal ; for the queen 
was said to be the incarnation of virtue and modesty, 
whatever her consort may have been, and disposed to 
resent his amours with others of her sex. It was this 
indiscreet action of Ximenes that led to the outbreak in 
the Alpuxarras, narrated in a previous chapter, and 
which was at its height in the closing year of the cen- 
tury. 

The many noble lives lost to Spain in that melan- 
choly uprising led to the issuance of the "prag mat tea" 



. 



170 THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 

from Seville, dated February 12, 1502, by which it was 
declared that all unbaptized Moors over fourteen years 
of age, if males, and over twelve if females, must quit 
the country by the end of the month of April following. 
They might, it was provided, convert all their realities 
into anything except "gold, silver and merchandise reg- 
ularly prohibited, " and go anywhere save to the domin- 
ions of the Grand Turk, or parts of Africa with which 
Spain was then at war. These provisions sent them 
forth absolutely penniless, and prevented them from 
having recourse to the only people of their religion, and 
who might befriend them. 

Having now expelled all obdurates, and converted 
he remaining Moors into pseudo Christians, Spain,- it 
would seem, had arrived at her apogee of glory, in the 
first decade of the sixteenth century. 

As this event ,was in many respects the turning 
point of her destinies, and as the policies it shaped 
were those by which she was governed for centuries, 
the reader will, we trust, pardon another and extended 
reference to the remarks of the talented Prescott, who 
summarizes the situation in most admirable manner. 

"From that disastrous hour," he says, "religion wore 
a new aspect in this unhappy country. The spirit of 
intolerance, no longer hooded in the darkness of the 
cloister, now stalked abroad in all its terrors. Zeal 
was exalted into fanaticism, and a rational spirit of 
proselytism into one of fiendish persecution. It was 
not enough now, as formerly, to conform passively to 
the doctrines of the church, but it was enjoined to make 
war on all who refused them. The natural feelings of 
compunction in the discharge of this sad duty was a 
crime, and the tear of sympathy, wrung out by the 
sight of mortal agonies, was an offence to be expiated 
by humiliating penance. 



THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 171 

The most frightful maxims were engrafted into the 
code of morals. Any one, it was said, might con- 
scientiously kill an apostate wherever he could meet 
him. There was some doubt whether a man 
might slay his own father, if a heretic or infidel, 
but none whatever as to his right, in that event, to 
take away the life of his son or of his brother. These 
maxims were not a dead letter, but of most active 
operation, as the sad records of the dread tribunal 
too well prove. The milk of charity > nay, of hu- 
man feeling, was soured in every bosom. The lib- 
liberality of the old Spanish cavalier gave way to the 
fiery fanaticism of the monk. The taste for blood, 
once gratified, begat a cannibal appetite in the people, 
who, cheered on by the frantic clergy, seemed to vie 
with one another in the eagerness with which they ran 
down the miserable game of the Inquisition. It was at 
this very time, when the infernal monster gorged but 
not sated with human sacrifice, was crying aloud for 
fresh victims, that Granada surrendered to the Span- 
iards, under the solemn guarantee of the full enjoyment 
of civil and religious liberty." . . . "With these 
sad events, narrated in previous chapters, may be said 
to terminate the history of the Moors, or the Moriscos, 
as henceforth called, under the present reign. Eight 
centuries had elapsed since their first occupation of the 
country, during which period they had exhibited all the 
various phases of civilization, from its dawn to its de- 
cline. Ten years had sufficed to overturn the splendid 
remains of this powerful empire, and ten more for its 
nominal conversion to Christianity. A long century 
of persecution, of unmitigated and unmerited suffering 
was to follow, before the whole was to be consummated 
by the expulsion of this unhappy race from the Penin- 
sula." 



172 THE FRUITS OF VIC TOBY. 

Not content with their persecution in his own coun- 
try, the great, if not good, Ximenes followed the flee- 
ing Moors over into Africa. As we have seen, when, 
in the year America was discovered,* their last strong- 
hold was taken when Granada and the Alhambra fell, 
they flocked to Africa by thousands and tens of thou- 
sands. Many went to Morocco, probably landing first 
at Tangier, which is so accessible from near Gibraltar; 
but the most of them settled about the city of Oran, 
which had been, ever since the middle of the thirteenth 
century, a port of the kingdom of Tlemcen, in the in- 
terior. About the year 1500, when the implacable 
Ferdinand had succeeded in wiping out the last vestige 
of Moorish domination in Spain, this port of Oran be- 
came a great resort for pirates and Moorish corsairs, 
who very rightfully considered the commerce of the 
Christians as a legitimate object for reprisals and prey. 

In 1505, the year after the death of Isabella, Ximenes 
made this port the object of a reconnoissance with a 
view to attack in force, and four years later, having an 
able engineer and military leader to assist him in the 
person of the Count Pedro Navarro, he carried out his 
long-cherished scheme. He had appealed to Ferdinand 
first to undertake the capture of Oran himself, and then 
(the king being disgusted at the acts of many of his 
nobles while he was in Italy, and having no confidence 
in them, refused to lead them) the determined Ximenes 
craved permission to equip, at his own expense, an ex- 
pedition, and to accompany it in person. The king 
was also suspicious of Gonsalvo de Cordova, who had 
been fighting his battles in Italy, and whose popularity 
was in decided contrast to his own temporary eclipse, 
owing to his marriage with the new queen and his dis- 
agreement with Philip, his daughter Juana's husband; 
so there being none other to command, Ximenes went 



THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 173 

along himself. And this was how it came about that 
the nobles sneeringly said that it was now left for "a 
monk to fight the battles of Spain, while the Great 
Captain, Gonsalvo de Cordova, was left to stay at 
home and count his beads like a hermit!" 

But the monk had planned well, and he (or his 
soldiers) fought well, too. He reaped the glory of the 
achievement, but it was doubtless due to his engineer- 
commander, Count Pedro Navarro. Ordnance, provi- 
sions and military stores were provided at the cardi- 
nal's expense, and he, though arrived at the age of 
seventy years, directed the embarkation at Carthagena 
and saw with exultation, from the deck of his ship, the 
departure of his fleet of ninety galleys and vessels, with 
his army aboard, composed of about four thousand 
horse and ten thousand foot soldiers. As all those 
who embarked in this holy war were granted an indul- 
gence from fast days during the terms of their natural 
lives, the great Ximenes did not lack for enthusiastic 
soldiers; but not long after landing at Oran many of 
them did not need indulgences on this earth; for the 
fortress of Oran was situated on an almost impregnable 
height, and they took it only after most desperate fight- 
ing, and leaving th£ grassy hillside deep strewn with 
slain. The only approach to the fortress, which still 
stands in gloomy ruin, is along a sharp-edged crest, 
where there was but slight hold for scaling ladders to 
be placed. How many must have perished ere the 
strong walls were taken ! Every rock must have been 
drenched in the blood of the slain, and the entire crest 
covered with their corpses. 

We have forged somewhat ahead of our story, in 
following the Cardinal Ximenes into Africa, in order 
to narrate the sequel to the expulsion of ihe Moors from 
Spain. Along the African coast their descendants 



174 THE FRUITS OF VICTORY. 

dwell to-day; in Tlemcen and Oran in Algiers; in 
Tangier and Tetuan in Morocco, Spanish is almost as 
much the language of the Moorish families as is Arabic. 
Many families, it is said, still possesses the keys to the 
houses vacated by their ancestors in Granada, and yet 
cling to the belief that the time will come when they 
shall again enter into the possession of their own, of 
which they were deprived by the unlawful acts of the 
Spanish king and queen. 

As the conqueror of Oran, perhaps Ximenes is better 
known than as the founder of that celebrated university 
at Alcala, which he watched over so many years, and 
to which he devoted the best years of his life and vast 
sums of money for its maintenance. Here also he 
caused to be gotten together the erudite scholars who 
translated and compiled the material for the great 
"Complutensian Bible," that wonderful polyglot pub- 
lication, manuscripts for which were collected from all 
parts of the world. The types for this great work in 
many languages were cast here, and all the labor per- 
formed — in fact it was his own creation, and stands a 
monument to his zeal and energy; which it were regret- 
able had not always been turned into such peaceful, if 
not harmless channels. 



w^^^v™, • • • wn ■ 
QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 175 






XIV. 

QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 

By the death of Isabella, on November 26, 1504, the 
kingdom was deprived of the brightest ornament in its 
crown, and Ferdinand of one who had been in a meas- 
ure his conscience and his guiding star. There is no 
doubt that Isabella was more to him than he would 
have acknowledged, a balance to his somewhat erratic, 
not to say frivolous character, if we may judge by his 
actions soon after her death. From the Spanish point 
of view, Isabella was well-nigh perfect; as a woman, 
as a mother, and as a queen and ruler. Applying to 
her the most rigorous standards, she was most admira- 
ble, always leaving out of the matter her unmitigated 
bigotry. Alas, that one so altogether commendable 
otherwise, should have been swayed by what her 
biographer styles her "ghostly counsellors. " As a 
mother, she performed every duty imposed upon her 
with grace and gentleness, being, perhaps, a model in 
this respect. She loved, if she did not absolutely re- 
spect her royal consort; she loved passionately the chil- 
dren vouchsafed her by heaven, and lavished upon 
them every endearment. That her plans for their 
future w r ere in the largest sense worldly and far-reach- 
ing, was to be expected; that they nearly all miscar- 
ried of her benevolent intent, was but the. misfortune 
common to humanity in general. 

Early in her reign she was called upon to part with 
her beloved son and heir, Prince John, for whom she 







176 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 



had devised a matrimonial alliance with a princess of 
the House of Austria, and whose death so soon followed 
after his seemingly auspicious marriage. 

Then died her second daughter, Isabella, twice mar- 
ried to princes of Portugal, and whoso heir if he had 
survived, would probably have consummated the union 
so devoutly desired by his grandmother of the two king- 
doms so nearly allied by situation and physical fea- 
tures. Catharine, the unlucky Catalina of Aragon, 
likewise married to two princes, first to Arthur, Prince 
of Wales, and next to that monster of English royalty, 
Henry VIII. , although the mother of children from 
whom some expectations were hoped, yet was no factor 
in the schemes which her mother prepared for the ex- 
tension of the Spanish influence on the continent. 

At last, to her sorrow, Isabella saw that her sole ex- 
pectation devolved upon her daughter Juana or Joanna, 
w T ho, though early giving signs of mental disturbance, 
was united in marriage with Archduke Philip, son and 
heir of the Emperor Maximilian of Austria, and ruler 
in his own right, through his mother, of the "Low 
Countries." Juana was despatched to meet her lover 
accompanied by a large fleet second in importance only 
to that famous Armada, equipped many years later by 
her grandson Philip II., for the conquest of Eng- 
land. After a tempestuous voyage she arrived at 
her destination in Flanders, was united to the frivolous 
Philip; eventually returned to Spain an object of com- 
miseration, a deceived and dejected wife, with the 
mental malady ^she had fallen heir to greatly aggra- 
vated ; but, as already noted, the only hope of Isabella 
for the perpetuation of the royal line of Castile. Yet, 
cognizant as she must have been of Joanna's unfitness 
for a ruler, Isabella designated her successor to the 
crown, with King Ferdinand as regent during the 



QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 177 

minority of her son Charles, then — at the time of her 
last illness, nearly four years of age. Had she given 
proof of greater trust in her husband, Ferdinand, and, 
instead of making him merely regent, when he might 
have been king in reality, much trouble might have 
been obviated, probably, for the country she loved so 
well, and to which she had given the best years of her 
short span of life. For, Isabella died at the compara- 
tively early age of fifty -four, worn out with the respon- 
sibilities of office, borne to the grave by cares and re- 
sponsibilities which, to one of her conscientious nature, 
could not be other than overwhelmingly crushing, 
"Isabella's actions indeed," says her biographer, 
"were habitually based on principle. Whatever errors 
of judgment be imputed to her, she most anxiously 
sought in all directions to discern and discharge her 
duty. Faithful in the dispensation of justice, no bribe 
was large enough to ward off the execution of the law. 
No motive, not even conjugal affection, could induce 
her to make an unsuitable appointment to public office. 
No reverence for the ministers of religion could lead 
her to wink at their misconduct; nor could the defer- 
ence she entertained for the head of the church allow 
her to tolerate his encroachments on the rights of the 
crown. She seemed to consider herself especially 
bound to preserve entire the peculiar claims and privi- 
leges of Castile, after its union under the same sover- 
eign with Aragon. And although, says Peter Martyr, 
'She governed in such a manner that it might appear 
the joint action of both Ferdinand and herself,' yet she 
was careful never to surrender into his hands one of 
those prerogatives which belonged to her as queen pro- 
prietor of the kingdom/' 

She carried this sentiment of caution and aversion to 
the rule of her husband over her ancestral kingdom to 



178 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHAMLES V. 

the extreme that it -became her ' 'ruling passion strong 
in death" as shown by her preference of "Juana Loca," 
the Crazy Joanna, as queen proprietor, to the strong, 
sagacious, statesmanlike Ferdinand as possible king. 
In justice to her husband, whose ambitions and aspira- 
tions she thought she had good cause to distrust, it 
must be said that he had not merited this disparage- 
ment; and perhaps, after all, there may have been 
traced the prevision of a jealous forewarning of the 
course he actually did pursue in forming a matri- 
monial alliance within a short period of her death, 
which was a tacit insult to her long and devoted attach- 
ment to him as queen consort. 

The complications that ensued after her death; when 
Ferdinand and Philip were pitted against each other 
in a game of diplomacy which nearly proved the ruin 
of the nation, we have scarcely space to review in this 
connection. Both knew well that Joanna was wholly 
unfit to reign, and the " queen proprietor" herself was 
aware of her unfitness, and took no part in the quarrels 
that ensued. Philip came to Spain, bringing a train of 
Flemish attendants with him, who were soon inducted 
into all the high offices, ousting the former retainers of 
Isabella, and causing deep disgust in the Spanish popu- 
lar mind. Ferdinand himself, though at first disposed 
to resent the pretensions of his troublesome son-in-law, 
for the sake of peace temporarily abandoned bis own 
claims and sought solace in an alliance with the beauti- 
ful Germaine, sister of Louis XII., of France, and 
with the latter concluding a treaty which, in the event 
of another heir being born to him, would deprive the 
artful Philip of a great part of his prospective posses- 
sions. He had already resigned his claim to the crown 
of Castile, in favor of Philip and Joanna, with great 
flourish of trumpets and show of true loyalty, at 



. 



QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 179 

Toledo, and the grandees of the kingdom had taken the 
oath of allegiance to them, at Torro in January, 1505, 
Ferdinand and Germaine were united in marriage 
within seventeen mouths after the death of Isabella 
and in the very town of Segovia, where he had espoused 
the latter, thirty years before; and this exhibition of 
bad taste and apparent haste did net elevate him in the 
eyes of the Castilians. After the arrival in Spain of 
Joanna and Philip in April, 1506, Ferdinand was com- 
pelled to witness the defection of many of his nobles, 
and, to avoid as much as possible the chagrin of seeing 
himself neglected where he had once reigned supreme, 
he embarked for Naples, where his Great Captain 
Gonsalvo, had prepared another kingdom for him by 
his repeated victories, and where he had risen to such 
height that the king was anxious lest he might be 
tempted to usurp the throne himself. To his glad sur- 
prise, Gonsalvo met him at Genoa, and together they 
proceeded in great state toward Naples. On the way, 
however, he received, with mingled emotions, the sad 
news of Philip's death, which had occurred on Septem- 
ber 25th, within exactly five months of his arrival in 
Spain; but not before he had shown unmistakable signs 
of enmity toward his father-in-law, and the people over 
whom he was called to reign. He was but twenty- 
eight years of age, handsome and accomplished ; he 
had every prospect before him of a long and eventful 
career; but death claimed him, as it had claimed 
Prince John, his sister's husband, while yet standing 
on the threshold of power and unlimited glory. 

The old king, who was being feted with his young 
wife, by his Italian subjects, and who had no desire 
for returning in haste to a country which had so re- 
cently been in quasi rebellion against, and all but 
repudiated him, proceeded leisurely on his way, and 




180 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 

did not reach Spain, on his return journey, until June 
of the next year, 1507. Then there was some hesita- 
tion on the part of the nobles to receive him ; but event- 
ually he recovered all his ancient heritage and made 
his power felt over the land. Especially had he been 
indebted to the Great Captain, and to his associates for 
support; but Ferdinand seemed to suspect his noble 
soldier had ulterior designs, and let him retire to his 
dominions and remain there — as has been already noted 
— while Cardinal Ximenes went over and conquered 
the Moors of Oran. The king was particularly severe 
with some of the Andalusian nobles, and from Don 
Pedro de Cordova, son of the famous Aguilar who 
perished fighting Ferdinand's battles in the Alpuxarras, 
he took nearly all his possessions, and banished him 
from Cordova, at the same time executing the sentence 
of death against some of his companions who were less 
guilty than he. This noble was a nephew of the Great 
Captain ; but no accusation could be brought against 
the latter, who was content, in his old age to enjoy his 
vast estates in Andalusia. He was the first of the 
grand trio: Ferdinand, Ximenes, and Gonzalvo, to de- 
part this life, giving up the ghost in December, 1515. 
Next to follow was King Ferdinand, who was seized 
with his last illness while journeying through a small 
village near Truxillo and who died on January 
23, 1516. He left no heir by Queen Germaine; their 
only child, a son, born in 1509, having lived but a few 
hours. His own favorite for the succession was Ferdi- 
nand, the younger son of Joanna, and he would have 
advanced him at the expense of the older, Charles, had 
he been able to do so. As it was, after in vain at- 
tempting to lessen the extent of the dominions to which 
Charles was to fall heir, he left the regency during the 
latter's minority to Cardinal Ximenes, having received 



QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 181 

go great proof, during his long service, that he would 
administer whatever trust w 7 as committed to his care 
with ability and devotion. 

By the d^ath of King Ferdinand the elder son of 
Joanna, Charles, received the crown of Spain although 
his mother was nominally queen. Displaying from the 
very first those ambitions for which he was in after 
years famous and which urged him to grasp at the uni- 
versal scepter of the world Charles L, as he was now 
called, was impatient to enter into possession of his 
new dignities. He landed in Spain in September, 
1517, whither he had been preceded by his tutor- 
Adrian, >vhom he afterward made Pope; and his first 
concern seemed to be as to the course of Ximenes, who 
had stood loyally by his rights, and in effect had 
preserved to him his crown. This, however, did not pre- 
vent him from sending the aged cardinal an imperti- 
nent, ungrateful letter, which is said to have hastened 
his end. If this be so, then indeed can one see in the 
exaggerated importance which the great cardinal at- 
tached to an epistle from the upstart son of an imbecile 
queen, the abasement of nature which originally was 
grand and dignified and which in former years could 
assert its dignity even before the Queen of Spain. At 
all events, Charles did not reach his devoted servant 
before the end came to this old man, who, having tasted 
all the fruits of greatness, havr'ng rung all the changes 
of life from poverty to the heights of the primacy of 
Spain, turned his face to the wall and expired. This 
event took place on November 8, 1517, when the 
cardinal was in his eighty-first year; thus by the 
deaths of three great men, Ferdinand, Gonsalvo, and 
Ximenes, Spain was bereft in as many years. No one 
rose to take their places; but their work had been so 
great and so far-reaching, that perhaps no one was 



182 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 

necessary. Adrian succeeded to Ximenes, Charles I. 
to Ferdinand, and later on arose other captains to con- 
duct the vast military operations of the times. 

We shall not devote great space to the reign of this 
new King of Spain, who came into the succession, more 
because his royal mother was incapacitated through 
insanity than through any inherent or inherited merits 
or capacities of his own. We have treated the reigns 
of his predecessors, especially the reign of Isabella and 
Ferdinand, at greater length, because during those 
reigns, and particularly during the latter, were laid 
the foundations for all the great things which made 
Spain famous and world-renowned after Charles's suc- 
cession. 

It was through Columbus — who died eleven years 
before Charles came from Flanders to Spain, more like 
his foreign attendants than a Spaniard — that he fell 
heir to those vast discoveries in the New World — dis- 
coveries carried on and succeeded by settlements and 
the development of mines of gold and silver, conquests 
of Indians and founding of cities, carried on uninter- 
mittently by Spaniards who had never seen their sov- 
ereign, or hardly knew who he was, nor why he had 
succeeded to a sovereignty so nobly extended by their 
great hero and heroine, Ferdinand and Isabella. The 
great India House, with its headquarters at Seville, and 
its ramifications in every known part of the New World 
to which the Spanish explorers had carried their coun- 
try's flag, transacted all the business of the colonies and 
continued its operations without even a thought being 
given to it by the sprig of royalty who had come over 
to reign in Spain. It has so long been the custom to 
laud Charles for this great achievement and that vast 
enteprise, in which he had directly no more to do than 
the writer or reader of these lines, that the world has 







QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 183 



formed an estimate of this hair-brained king far ex- 
ceding his true deserts. The real facts are that he 
might have been the meanest creation that ever was 
formed in the shape of man, and surrounded as he was 
by such environments and propelled by such vast forces, 
the springs of which were already set in motion by his 
ancestors, he could not have failed to reach a height 
which, to the ordinary mortal, would look sublime. 
This in truth has been the way with mankind ever 
since the most primitive dweller in cave and tree, in 
hut or in hole dug in the earth, felt the impulse within 
him to set up something or other and then fall down 
and worship it, as a ruler or as a god. More than any 
other people, perhaps, those who have lived in Spain 
and have aided in supporting many an imbecile mon- 
arch, have felt the enfeebling effects of this childish 
system. They are feeing those effects to-day, and yet 
they still persist in wasting the best years of their na- 
tional life in nursing babies and child kings, rather 
than in electing some vigorous ruler to occupy their 
tottering throne. Half a dozen times in the history of 
Spain, puling infants in arms and babes not yet out 
of the nursery have succeeded to the kingship, and 
quite a hundred years, that might have been devoted to 
recuperation and improvement, have been thrown away 
in the support of irresponsible regencies and royal 
favorites. 

To such a people, then, the young Charles appears 
somewhat of a demigod, and his reign one of the most 
glorious and enlightened in history. But it is when 
we consider the antecedents of this young man who was 
foisted into the chair of state, soon to be invested with 
unlimited opportunities for good and evil, that we be- 
come convinced of the actual impossibility for one of 
his mold and caliber to benefit his own country. 



184 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V, 

To return a moment to the unfortunate queen pro- 
prietor, Joanna; although she was the titular sover- 
eign, yet her unfilial son soon deprived her of all voice 
in affairs and gathered into his own hand the reins of 
government. After the death of her husband, Philip, 
she was entirely absorbed in the contemplation of her 
great loss; even though she had been aware of his 
lapses from virtue and had suffered greatly from his 
violence when he was alive. She abandoned herself 
to grief and melancholy, and her one idea seemed to be 
t'hat she should ever keep her dead husband's remains 
within her view. With this hallucination in full force, 
she frequently had the caskets opened in which he lay, 
a moldering corpse, and dwelt with mournful joy 
upon his fast decaying features. She gave everything 
into the hands of Ferdinand, upon his return from 
Naples, her one answer, when importuned about the 
affairs of government being: "My father will attend 
to all this when he returns; he is much more con- 
versant with business than I am; I have no other 
• duties now but to pray for the soul of my departed 
husband." Thus did she honor the memory of her 
unfaithful spouse, Felipe el hermoso, the Handsome 
Philip. The remains of Joanna and Felipe now rest 
in the magnificent mausoleum at Granada; but it was 
many years before the queen would allow- her husband 
final sepulture. In the depths of winter she started, 
with a retinue of nobles and ecclesiastics, from the 
northern city of Burgos, for the far distant city of 
Granada where she intended to deposit the remains. 
Moody and melancholy as she was, she persisted in 
journeying only by night, and in the worst of weather. 
At one time, when the cavalcade had halted in the 
courtyard of what she supposed was a monastery, occu- 
pied by monks, she discovered that it was really a con- 







QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 185 

vent filed with nuqs, and in horror at the thought of 
her handsome Philip exposed to such great temptation, 
she commanded the coffin to be removed to the open 
fields, in the dead of night, and by torchlight again 
viewed her precious relics, that she might be satisfied 
he was yet safe from harm. 

Finally, to the great relief of her wondering and 
half -dead attendants, she resolved to halt permanently 
at Tordesillas, w T here, in the monastery of Santa Clara 
she deposited the remains of Philip, and in the adjoin- 
ing palace took up her abode, where she could watch 
over him and prevent any attempt at escape. Here 
she resided forty-seven years, and, though she lived 
throughout nearly the whole of Charles' long reign, 
and died but five years prior to his own decease; and 
though she was nominally queen all this time, she signed 
no paper of state, and took no part in the government 
of the nation. "She lingered out nearly half a cen- 
tury of dreary existence, as completely dead to the 
world as the remains which slept in the monastery of 
Santa Clara beside her." And this was the mother of 
Charles I., who, as Charles V. of Germany, ruled over 
a vaster kingom than any other potentate of his 
time. 

The Spaniards did not view with favor the election 
of Charles to the imperial crown of Maximilian of 
Austria ; and it was soon shown that their fears were 
not unwisely founded. For, no sooner was he seated on 
the imperial throne than he began that career of con- 
quest and devastation that has made him famous; he 
called upon Spain for the soldiers and money for his 
vast enterprises, and it was at the expense of this un- 
fortunate country that they were accomplished. It was 
drained of its best blood, and its treasury, though into 
it was poured the millions and millions now flowing 



180 QUEEN JOANNA AND CHARLES V. 

from the West Indies and America, was exhausted 
time and again. 

One of the first of his royal audiences was that famous 
Diet of Worms, before which was haled the sturdy 
founder of Protesantism, Martin Luther, to answer to 
the charge of heresy. No more contemptible picture 
of the times appears upon the pages of history than 
this of the great Luther, then in the plentitude of his 
mental powers, appearing before the uneducated and 
trivial Charles, pleading for his life. The emperor 
was then hardly twenty-one years of age, and yet 
arrogated to himself the settling of questions involving 
the vital interests of millions of his subjects. The con- 
test between these two was continued for many years, 
and in the end Protestantism triumphed, though only 
after blood had flowed like water, and countries had 
been exhausted in the terrible struggle for religious 
freedom. 

Between Charles and Francis I. of France a feud 
was opened that lasted until the death of the latter, 
and the results of which, in massacres and battles, ap- 
peared intermittently for generations. Charles gener- 
ally won, as at Pavia, one of his most glorious victories; 
and treaties were frequently patched up only to be 
broken when it suited the convenience of either party 
to these agreements. It is a speaking commentary 
upon the vitiating effects of monarchical rule that even 
a respectable British encylopasdia in a summary of his 
virtues says: "His private morals bear a favorable 
comparison with those of contemporary princes," and in 
the next line this : "Don John of Austria was an illegi- 
timate son," etc. 

Heaven save America from the European standard 
of morals ! 



PHILIP II AND THE ESCURIAL. 187 



CHAPTER XV. 

PHILIP II. AND THE ESCURIAL. 

Charles' accession was marked by opposition which 
soon developed into a civil strife in which" many thou- 
sands fell and several cities were destroyed. This was 
the insurrection of the Comuneros, as it was called, 
when the nobles and the common people united against 
the king as their common enemy. He was absent from 
Spain when the insurrection broke out, and when he 
returned, in 1522, it had been quenched. But an 
attempt had been made by a noble named Pad ilia to 
secure the throne in behalf of Joanna, and his futile 
endeavors to obtain her sanction, when, insane as she 
was, she absolutely refused to put her hand or signa- 
ture to any document, would appear supremely ridicu- 
lous, had they not been productive of so much misery 
and bloodshed. Somehow, after havi ng had his bat- 
tles fought for him during his absence, and having ob- 
tained yet greater appropriations for his foreign wars, 
Charles retained the confidence of the benighted 
masses; and his later victories over the French and 
Italians, and his campaigns against the Moslems un- 
der the pirate king Barbarrossa, kept him before their 
notice as a hero and conqueror. 

This seems to have satisfied them, though they now 
and then protested against the terrible expenditures of 
blood and treasure by which the country was being 
impoverished. In the main, Charles was successful in 
his wars; by i 'successful" we mean that he usually 



188 PHILIP II AND TUE ESCURIAL. 

gained the victories and carried his points; but in the 
end his very victories were more than disappointing. 
His long and determined conflict with Protestantism, 
however, was ended in defeat for him, and in the world- 
wide spread of the very "heresy" which he^had so per- 
sistently combated and tried to strangle at its birth. 
In this light, therefore, he may be said to have failed 
of his great and ultimate aims; and at last, weary even 
of fighting, and after a long reign of more than forty 
years, he was glad to lay down the insignia of royalty 
and abdicate in favor of Philip, his only legitimate 
8 on. 

This son, the apple of his eye and the darling of his 
heart, he had carefully trained to follow in his footsteps, 
and it is to the credit of Philip, as a son, that he en- 
deavored to do so. He never, during his father's life, 
entered upon any important negotiation or military 
adventure without consulting with his father, who, 
having retired to a castle in the beautiful valley of 
Yuste, where he passed his time in prayer and medita- 
tion, in occupations of humble character, was yet able 
and willing to give his advice. In some respects 
Philip II. was the counterpart of his father, yet with 
his virtues lacking and his vices amplified. He was 
equally ambitious and imperious, he was vastly more 
bigoted, if possible, and unyielding to counsel from 
others. His father, was reckoned as comparatively vir- 
tuous ; he consorted with women other than with his 
wife — to whom it is said he was devotedly attached — 
but he carried on his amours under cover of secrecy, as 
it were, and did not flaunt them in the face of society. 
He had but one wife whom the law recognized, while 
Philip, even before he became king of Spain, had been 
married twice. His second wife was "Bloody Mary," 
of England, who sought to gain his favor and win his 







PHILIP II. AND THE ESCURIAL. 189 



love by unexampled severity toward her Protestant sub- 
jects, sending many to the stake and harrying others 
out of the country. It was all in vaip, however, and 
when she died her wayward husband was far distant 
from her, meditating other alliances. After her death 
he subjected himself to the scornful refusal of her sister 
Elizabeth's hand, and consoled himself with a princess of 
France; after her with Anne of Austria, in all marry- 
ing four wives, and each one a princess of a different 
nationality. He gained nothing great from these 
matrimonial connections, even though his object may 
have been to strengthen his kingdom by such ; and, as 
the imperial crown worn by his father was refused 
him, he shrunk to proportions insignificant, as com- 
pared with what his father had attained to. Still, 
when he came into power, he looked upon himself as a 
monarch over Spain proper, the kingdom of Naples 
and Sicily, the duchy of Milan ; Franche Comte and 
the Netherlands, which he inherited through his grand- 
mother; provinces in Africa, as Oran and Tunis, and 
the Cape de Verde Islands; and in America all that the 
explorers and conquerors had added to the kingdom dur- 
ing the reigns of his father and grandfather. Columbus 
and his followers had given him the West Indies and 
north coast of South America; Cortez had conquered 
Mexico, and Pizarro Peru, while the great Magellan 
had carried the Spanish flag inti the far Pacific and 
planted it above that vast archipelago named after- 
wards in honor of this same sovereign, the Philippi nes. 
Though disappointed at the outcome of his matrimonial 
venture with England's queen, and with the princesses 
of France and Austria, yet Philip still was entitled to 
be considered one of the mightiest monarchs of the 
world, of his time. Having a great portion of the 
world tributary to him, and dependent upon his pleas- 







190 PHILIP II. AND THE ESCURIAL. 

ure, he allowed himself to believe that it should also 
profess the same religious belief that he himself held, 
and which he was convinced was the only true and sav- 
ing faith. He had in overflowing measure that narrow 
bigotry of Isabella and Ferdinand, as well as of 
Charles his father, which urged him to commit the 
most hideous crimes for the furtherance of religion— as 
he viewed it. With absolutely clear conscience he 
could drive people to the stake and cause to be devoured 
by the flames, all, even innocent women and children, 
who did not unhesitatingly accept and proclaim the 
same belief as himself. The Inquisition, as we have 
seen, though of Roman origin and fathered by the pope, 
rose to the greatest height of its terrible power in Spain. 
It had been introduced into Aragon, previous to the 
reign of Isabella and Ferdinand, but was destined to 
biaze forth its baleful fires most brightly during their 
sovereignty. Established by Isabella, or at her re- 
quest, by a bull of Pope Sixtus IV., in 1478, it was in 
" working order" against the Jews in 1481, six heretics 
being burned at the stake in January, and before the 
year had closed nearly three hundred victims suffered 
the same penalty; besides numerous others against 
whom the crime was fastened, but who, having escaped 
its deserts by death, were torn from their graves and 
burned. From this year the number continued to in- 
crease, until, according to the historian of the Inquisi- 
tion, more than one hundred thousand suffered directly 
from its impositions, during the eighteen remaining 
years of Torquemada's life, of which number more than 
ten thousand were burned to death. The indirect suffer- 
ing caused by this secret engine of hell, with its tor- 
tures and confiscations of properties, its autos da fe 
and its multitudinous emissaries, is incalculable. At 
first directed against the Jews, and after that against 









PHILIP IL AND THE ESCURIAL. 191 

apostate Moors, it was not many years before the In- 
quisition, craving victims as its appetite for human 
blood increased, after the manner of its prototype, the 
tiger of the jungle, turned upon the nominal Christians 
of the kingdom and rent the heart of Spain in twain. 
It was in full blast during the reign of Charles V., and 
was one of the dreadful legacies handed down by him 
to his dutiful son, Philip IL, who used the complicated 
enginery, with its ramifications into every portion of 
his dominions, in America as well as in Europe, for 
the furtherance of his hellish designs. It was in the 
Netherlands, however, that the fire and rack, and the 
gallows were unsparingly used under Philip's com- 
mander, the Duke of Alva, a man after his own heart, 
who is sad to have boasted of the thousands he had been 
the means of sending to untimely deaths. Through 
these means he for a while retained control of the Low 
Countries, but in the end they were the measures by 
which they were forever lost to Spain. As his father 
had been worsted in his struggle with the leaders of 
the Reformation, so Philip II. was conquered by the 
sturdy patriots under William the Silent and his coad- 
jutors. His natural half-brother, Don Juan of Austria, 
had no better success, though, like Alva, he harried the 
Netherlands with fire and the sword; but in his encoun- 
ter with the Turks in the great naval battle of Lepanto, 
he turned back the incoming tide of Moslem conquerors 
and secured all Europe from their invasions in the 
future. Don Juan went over and took Tunis and Oran 
on the North African coast, and owing to the suspicions 
of his half-brother, Philip, contemplated founding there 
an African empire, where he might be secure from the 
machinations of the king. But after further services 
against the enemies of Philip, he was at last found 
murdered in his tent, probably a victim of the devilish 







192 PHILIP II AND THE E£ 



king. Against Philip II. in fact have been brought the 
accusations of numerous people, as the murderer, more 
or less directly, of many of his own people, some of his 
own kin. It has always been charged against him 
that mysterious death of his son, Don Carlos, the un- 
fortunate youth who had the ill fortune to fall in love 
with the French princess whom Philip appropriated to 
himself. He was imprisoned, it is alleged, tortured, 
and finally brought to his end by poison; dying at an 
early age, the victm of parental hate, his treatment in 
striking contrast to that which Philip himself had 
received from his own father, and Don Carlos' grand- 
father, Charles. But Philip II. would be styled to- 
a moral pervert, as absolutely a degenerate as ever the 
world produced; yet he held within his terrible grasp 
millions of subjects, upon % whom he freely wreaked his 
vengeance, for wrongs, real or imaginary. * They were 
mainly imaginary, those lapses from religious duties 
and beliefs that consituted in his mind the most treason- 
able crimes against the State, as well as against his God. 
The Dominican, Torquemada, the arch-fiend of the 
Inquisition at its beginning in Spain, lived to a good old 
age, and passed away in his bed; Philip II., who 
availed himself so effectually of the terrible engine of 
destruction created b} r Torquemada, also died in his 
bed, but after prolonged tortures from a most loathsome 
disease. It does not seem that wretches in high places 
like these often expiate their crimes in the flesh; but 
doubtless Philip II. may have been treated to torments 
anticipatory of the future. Stricken with disease in 
the last year of his life, 1598, he " lingered from June 
to September in horrible atrony — devoured alive by in- 
numerable vermin w T hich had developed in myriads out 
of his gouty and corrupted j r "nts and in exquisite 
malignity surpassed every deviltry ever invented by the 



PHILIP II. AND TUE ESCURIAL. 193 

Inquisition. Seeing his end approaching he discoursed 
with edification on sacred subjects; he provided thirty 
thousand masses to be said for his soul, and made mi- 
nute directions about his funeral obsequies. His last 
words w r ere: "I die like a good Catholic, in faith and 
obedience to the holy Roman Church." Then a par- 
oxysm passed over the bedful of crowned misery, an* 
Philip II. was no more. Thus ended the absolute des- 
potism of Philip II., a despotism fountained and cen- 
tered in him, with absolute power to nominate and 
remove every judge, magistrate, military or civil 
officer, every archbishop, bishop, and ecclesiastic of 
whatever sort; a reign consumed in 'accomplishing 
infinite nothing' iu extinguishing free institutions, and 
venerable municipal privileges; in nullifying legisla- 
tive and deliberate bodies; in eluding justice and con- 
stitutional right of every sort ; in infamous self-indul- 
gence, criminality and assassination; in kindling ever- 
lasting war in neighboring countries; in corrupting, 
bribing and espionaging half of contemporary Europe; 
in murdering thousands of Europeans; in generating 
the noisome and gigantic pestilence of an omnipotent 
Inquisition; and in organized terrorism, hostility of 
class to class, and extermination of the popular will. 

The most valuable part of the population of this 
world was "accursed" and excommunicated. Philip 
himself was the kingdom, concentrated in one all- 
powerful personality. Dependencies girdling the globo 
hung by a thread to a middle-sized, yellow-haired fa- 
natic, who, with horrible monotony of evil, poisoned tbo 
world for seventy-one years, and died leaving a mem 
compounded of every evil-smelling thing undei the 
sun ! 

Philip II. impoverished Spain, it is true, but when 
he died he left behind him a monument of which almo >i 







194 PHILIP II. AND THE ESCURIAL. 

every Spaniard is proud, and which is called by his 
admiring countrymen the "eighth wonder of the world" 
— la ochava maravilla del mundo. This is the Escurial, 
that vast aggregation of structures, situated about 
thirty miles from Madrid, which was begun about the 
year 1565 and finished in 1584, after an expenditure of 
more than three million dollars. One of the ^greatest 
wonders is that he whose conception it was should have 
survived to see it completed, and should have been able to 
finish and furnish it, to the minutest detail, even adorn- 
ing it with the finest sculptures and the richest works 
of art. In an attempt to grasp this immense work in 
the mass, we may say that in shape it is a rectangular 
parallelogram seven hundred and forty-four feet long, 
and five hundred and eighty wide, covering over five 
hundred thousand square feet of surface. It is in fact 
a very mountain of granite, artificial, but impressive, 
severe to austerity, but grand though gloomy. In gen- 
eral plan it is ^id to be based upon the traditional 
girdiron upon which St. Lawrence was broiled, laid 
over on its back and with the ieet sticking up in the 
air, bars, handle and all, complete. It was erected in 
pursuance of a vow by Philip, at the battle of San 
Quentin, which vow was faithfully carried out, at the 
expense of the monarch's suffering country. The 
Escurial proper is composed of a monastery, a palace, a 
church, a seminary, a grand library, and a mausoleum. 
Primarily as a mausoleum for the Spamsh kings, prob- 
ably, as most of them since Phillip's time have been 
interred here, in this, one of the gloomiest places in the 
world. Eight towers rise above the general mass of 
granite, to a height of two hundred feet, above them all 
towering the great dome of the church. There are six- 
teen courts, or patios, the first in point of size being 
that of the Kings, two hundred and thirty feet long, 



PHILIP II AND THE ESCUEIAL. 195 

rod one hundred and thirty-six in width. There are 
t'venty-six hundred windows, twelve hundred doors, 
eighty-six staircases, forty altars, three thousand feet 
of fresco paintings, and some eighty miles of paths, 
promenades and corridors, inside and out. The church 
itself, which is surrounded by the conventual structure, 
is three hundred and twenty feet long, two hundred and 
thirty wide, and \yith a height to the top of the dome or 
cupola of three hundred and twenty feet. On three 
sides of this simple Doric are several chapels, in honor 
of the principal saints in the calendar, not omitting tho 
eleven thousand virgins. The high altar, which is 
made of precious marbles and jaspers, inlaid with gold, 
is reached by a flight of blood-red steps, and the re/a- 
6/o, or altar screen, is composed of red granite, gilt, 
bronze and jaspers, and is said to have cost over two 
hundred thousand dollars. It seems almost impertinent 
to speak of cost in connection with this vast edifice, 
where labor, treasure, art and human lives were lav- 
ishly thrown upon its altars. It also seems impossible 
that it should have cost no more than three millions in 
the gross, even when money was so much more valu- 
able than now, when we reflect that this sum is fre- 
quently spent upon buildings at this age, without pro- 
ducing near the impression that this great pile reflects. 
Above the oratorios are the eflSgies of members of the 
royal families, kneeling, made of bronze; including 
portrait busts of Charles V. and his wife, and of Philip 
II. and his four wives. The chief attraction of this 
building is the reliquary — the relicario — where at one 
time were to be found seven thousand precious relics of 
the saints, gathered from all parts of the world ; but 
the gold, silver and precious stones in which they were 
once enshrined w r ere all taken away by the French 
about ninety years ago. Paintings there are here in 



196 PHILIP II. A¥D TIE ESGUBIAL. 

the grand hall by the masters of the world, tapestries 
by Flemish artists, a marble image of Christ by 
Cellini, a "Last Supper"' by Tintoretto. But the heart 
of this magnificent edifice is a small and gloomy cell, 
where Philip II. died, holding in his hand his father's 
crucifix; and where he proved the sincerity of his oft- 
repeated declaration, that this — a cell — was all he de- 
sired in the palace- monastery he had built in honor of 
his God. "The Escurial," says the Italian Amicis, "is 
Philip II. He is still there, alive and frightful, and 
with him the image of his terrible God!" 



SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 197- 



XVI. 

SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 

It is perhaps quite impossible to state exactly when 
Spain's power began to diminish, and she began that 
downward career which has brought her to the verge of 
ruin and impotence. But even while she was at her 
highest stage of glory, she contained within herself the 
Is of dissolution, which soon germinated, under the 
fructifying influences of Philip II. 's reign, and pro- 
duce i baneful fruit before the end of the sixteenth cen- 
ter. Spain's greatness may be said to have culmi- 
nated in the outfitting of that mighty fleet of vessels 
destined for the invasion and subjection of England 
out from Cadiz in 1588, ten years before Philip's 
b occurred. Under the command of the Duke of 
Sidonia, were placed one hundred and fifty vessels, in-, 
eluding sixty-five great galleons, twenty-five boats ex- 
ceeding three hundred tons, galliasses and galleys, with 
a total tonnage of more than seventy-five thousand eight 
hundred (75,800) tons. Two thousand four hundred and 
thirty guns composed the armament of this vast fleet, 
with ammunition to the amount of five thousand hun- 
dred-weight of powder, and one hundred and twenty- 
five thousand rounds of great shot. The fleet was 
manned by more than eight thousand four hundred 
sailors, and also carried soldiers to the number of 
twenty thousand; besides spiritual auxiliaries, of the 
church, priests and monks, two hundred in number. 
Philip II. had nearly exhausted all the resources of 



198 SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 

Spain in its preparation, but he had full confidence that 
his intention would be carried out: that England would 
be conquered, and afterward converted; and her proud 
queen, Elizabeth, who had refused the offer of his hand 
in marriage, earlier in their lives, would at last be 
humbled to the dust. In sooth, it seemed not improb- 
able, for England at that time had but thirty available 
ships, on duty, under Admiral Howard, and only 
seventeen thousand sailors. But her ships of oak were 
commanded by such heroes as Drake, Frobisher, Haw- 
kins; indeed, the first-named had already performed an 
act of valor when he "singed the King of Spain's 
whiskers" — as he termed it, by dashing into harbor, 
sometime previously, and destroying a great number of 
vessels, before this armada was brought to its perfec- 
tion. It finally got clear of the harbor, but was no 
sooner in open waters than a great storm scattered the 
fleet and compelled it to return and refit. It had first 
set forth in May, 1588, but the disasters of the storm 
detained it until July. It is a strange fact that Eng- 
land's warning of this hostile intention against her 
shores was obtained from Philip himself, in a book he 
had caused to be prepared, and a copy of which Lord 
Burleigh secured in May and forwarded to London; 
where it may still be seen in the British Museum. 
Thus his pride and vainglory frustrated the end of the 
expedition at the outset; though there is small doubt 
that bad the fleet proceeded directly on its way in the 
month of May, it would have caused great damage to 
England's coast towns, even if its armed force aboard 
had not effected a landing. 

If ever signal evidence was needed that Spain had 
been abandoned by the God of Battles, it was afforded 
in thi3 instance. For in the first place a storm had 
detained the fleet until its destination was known and 



SPAIN GETTING EXHAUST&T) ^199 

it Siilorsand soldiers demoralized; in the second, the 
British sea lions were allowed time to gather to oppose 
its entrance into the English Channel; and on the 
heels of these heart-breaking incidents came a series of 
terrible storms that pursued the fleet until its pitiful 
fragments, composed of not more than one-third its 
original complement of vessels, limped back to harbors 
in Spain, with a loss of sailors and soldiers amounting 
perhaps to half the number that bad set forth a few 
months before, so confident of eventual and easy vic- 
tories. 

One of the best accounts of the destruction of the re- 
nowned Spanish Armada is also the most recent, by 
our great naval authority, Captain Alfred T. Mahan, 
who says, in part: " The Armada entered the English 
Channel on July 30th, and on the 6th of August anchored 
off Calais, having traversed the channel successfully in 
a week. Three several actions had occurred ; none was 
decisive; but all tended generally in favor of the Eng- 
lish, who utilized their advantages of speed and artil- 
lery to hammer the foe with their long guns, while 
keeping out of range of his muskets and lighter cannon. 
According to a Spanish authority, the Spanish losses in 
battle were six hundred killed and eight hundred 
wounded, while the English loss, from first to last, did 
not reach one hundred. Such a discrepancy tells its 
own tale; but it is to be remembered moreover, that 
men slain means sides pierced and frames shattered. 
Shot; that fly wide, or that cut spars, sails, and rig- 
ging, kill comparatively few. With hulls thus dam- 
aged, the Spaniards had to confront the equinoctial 
gales of the Atlantic. At Calais, a friendly town, 
Parma might possibly join, but there was no harbor 
for big ships. . . . Medina Sidonia sent him word of 
his arrival; but it could not be hoped that the English 



) II t U CT. i. 



ETTING EX HA US TED. 

ie fleet to occupy that unprotected posi- 
1 undisturbed. The wind being to the r ard, 

r anchored at a safe distance to windward, and on 
the night of August 7, sent against the Spaniards eight 
fire-ships. The ordinary means of diverting these fail- 
ing, the Spanish admiral got under way. In this oper- 
ation the fleet drifted nearer the shore, and the wind 
next day coming out strong from the northwest and 
setting the ships bodily on the coast, he, under the 
advice of the pilots, stood into the North Sea. Had 
Flushing been in their possession, it might, with good 
} ilots, have afforded a refuge; but it was held by the 
Dutch. The English ships, more weatherly, drew up 
and engaged again; while the continuance of the wind, 
and the clumsiness of the Spaniards, threatened de- 
i traction upon the shoals of the Flemish coast. The 
. len shifting of the wind to the south saved them 
•n already in only six or seven fathoms of water, 
re again was no bad luck: nor could it"t>e consid- 
1 a misfortune that the southerly breeze, which car- 
them to the Pentland Firth, changed to the north- 
t as they passed the Orkneys and entered the 
tic, being thus fair for their homeward vo}~age. 
"The disasters of the Armada were due to the follow- 
causes: First, the failure to prescribe the effectual 
oling of the English navy as a condition precedent 
any attempt at invasion. Second, the neglect to 
lire beforehand a suitable point for making the junc- 
tion with the 4 army. Combinations thus intrusted to 
ace, have no right to expect success. Third, the 
several actions with the English failed because the 
ships, which could exert their power only close to the 
enemy, were neither so fast nor so handy as the latter. 
Only those who have the advantage of range, can afford 
inferiority of speed. Fourth, tl*9 disasters in the At- 










SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 201 

lantic were due either to original unseaworthiness, or 
to damage received in action, or to bad judgment in 
taking unweatherly ships too close to the shores of Ire- 
land, where strong westerly gales prevailed, and the 
coast was inhospitable." 

Not alone the coast, bat the people, of Ireland showed 
inhospitality, for many Spanish sailors who were cast 
ashore alivje had their throats cut by the Irish, as well 
as the same fate being meted out to the priests and sol- 
diers. Altogether the great Armada was the unluck- 
iest venture that Spain ever made; and it is not too 
much to say that even to-day she feels the terrible losses 
inflicted by the British and the storms. One point we 
should not fail to observe here: that while the Span- 
iards had the advantage of ships and guns, numbers, 
mere tonnage and weight of metal ; yet England had 
those "hearts of oak" as well as ships, and every man 
worked as though upon his individual efforts depended 
the repelling of the enemy. In a word, or rather in a 
sentence: It was the "men who worked the guns" — as 
was said and shown in our recent war with Spain, who 
won the victory and sent Philip II. 's squadrons home 
shattered and forever rendered helpless as against the 
prestige of England. A comparison to advantage 
might be instituted between the Spanish operations at 
that time, and those during the recent war, and it will 
show that Spanish methods have not materially changed 
since that remote time, three hundred years ago. Span- 
ish sailors are still ignorant of the first principles of 
seamanship, Spanish gunners still depend upon luck to 
train and aim their guns, and Spanish commanders 
consider themselves absolved from all blame if they 
can shift the responsibility upon some one else. It was 
a matter of record then, as off Santiago and in Manila 
Bay, that the Spanish guuners could not shoot their 










202 SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED 



guns to hit a vessel or even a fleet. That great crescent 
of Spanish galleons seven miles in length, was smashed 
again and again by the comparatively smaller vessels 
of Admiral Howard. The English ships were maneu- 
vered w r ith such consummate skill, says a writer on 
this affair, that the Spanish guns could never tell on 
them. On the other hand, the British poured the gal- 
leons full of shot. The Spanish gunners and marines 
were slow and aimless; the British gunners and 
marines activity personified. Not once? it is said, did 
a Spanish shot strike its intended mark ; while the Span- 
ish ships quivered and were shattered under the British 
fire, and their decks ran red with blood. 

But enough has been presented to show how signally 
defeated was the supreme effort of Philip II. to force 
upon another and more vigorous nation the obsolete reli- 
gion and methods of Spain. In fitting oat this vast expe- 
dition he had called upon his saints, and upon them relied 
mainly to encompass the defeat of his foes; upon them 
he placed the responsibility for defeat, and considered 
himself exculpated from all blame. He may have re- 
called that proverb to which we have alluded in a pre- 
vious chapter : "If God is against you the saints are of 
10 use." But he would not admit that God could be 
against him; he received the terrible news of disaster, 
it is said, with the same equanimity that he had re- 
ceived the glorious tidings of victory at the battle of 
Lepanto, and in both cases without change of counte- 
nance, in theEscuiial, surrounded by his brother monks 
and priests. Had Philip II. been less bigoted, more 
humane, he might perhaps have attained to unparalleled 
greatness; for surely he had the opportunity; and, we 
must confess, his schemes were vast and showed the 
workings of a mighty mind; mighty, but closely en- 
vironed about by the walls of intolerance and bigotry. 



SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 203 

Equally a bigot, but leas a king, was his son and 
successor, Philip III., who took the throne from his 
father when the latter left it at the command of death, 
in 1598. The long and bloody reign of Philip II., to- 
gether with that of his father, Charles V., just about 
filled and rounded out the century. The Duke of 
Alva, during Philip II. 's reign, had obtained posses- 
sion of Portugal, which remained under Spain until 
1640, when it was lost, and has never since been re- 
gained. Under Philip II., also, the Moriscos of Spain 
were terribly persecuted ; but they were allowed to re- 
main, as they were too great a source of profit to the 
Inquisition. But in Philip III.'s reign they were at 
last all expelled, and the final blow delivered to the 
languishing industries of Spain. Governed as he was 
by his favorite, the Prime Minister, Duke of Lerma, it 
was not strange that when Lerma 's brother, the Arch- 
bishop of Toledo, advocated the total expulsion of the 
Moriscos, Philip III. lent a willing ear. He was too 
weak for great policies, but not too weak to be cruel. 
He had inherited just sufficient of the ancestral insanity 
to become a fiend, but through consanguineous mar- 
riages his ancestors had also provided that he should 
be more of an imbecile than a man of parts. If such a 
man had been born a commoner he would have been 
shut up within the walls of an asylum for insane, or 
have been looked upon with scornful pity by his brother 
men. As it was, he became the tool of wicked 
and designing men, who found in him a promise of 
wickedness suited to their purposes, and a readiness to 
respond to iniquitous suggestions which resulted in 
well-filled coffers for them, and in empty public treas- 
ury and poverty for the people at large. It was in 1609 
that the Moors were driven out of Spain, notwithstand- 
ing the urgent petitions of the nobles of Valentia'and 










204 SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 

many of the dignataries of the land. Their sufferings, 
as had been those of their ancestors under like circum- 
stances, were- unspeakable; they died by thousands on 
the voyage to Africa, and when the survivors arrived 
m that country they were massacred by thousands more 
by their coreligionists, the Bedouins. Swiftly came 
the reward for such perfidy toward an already p3rse- 
cuted people, in the decline of agriculture, mining, 
manufacture, and consequently the commerce of the 
country: Spain was hurled downward on its course 
to national bankruptcy with frightful momentum. 
Neither in Naples nor in the Netherlands were affairs 
going prosperously, and the lines of constriction by 
which Spain was to lose her most valuable extraneous 
possessions were being more and more narrowly drawn. 
Favorite succeeded to favorite; in 1619 loomed up the 
ter of the Thirty Years' War, into which Philip 
Ilt.'s son and successor, Philip IV., could not fail to 
attracted. This, the la^st Philip of that century, 
n he abandoned the title of Prince of the Asturias 
(always borne by the princes of Spain), and fell heir to 
regnaney, was but sixteen years of age. But it 
mattered little what w r ere the age and qualifications of 
ees, or their lack of both years and experience; 
t:i3ir favorites ruled them, and through them their sub- 
jects. The favorite of Philip IV. was the miserable 
oarde Guzman, Duke of Olivares, who succeeded in 
m : ng himself into the confidenceof the young king, 
in getting him yet more intimately concerned in 
outcome of the Thirty Years' War. Through a 
i bi nation of ignorance and pride, Spain soon lost her 
hold on the Netherlands, and in the Indian Ocean was 
] jelled to acknowledge the supremacy of her former 
ject peoples, the Hollanders, whose ships secured 
for nhem the rich and precious Spice Islands. In 







SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 205 

France, Olivares had as a competitor the great Car- 
dinal Richelieu, whose forces eventually overran some 
of the northern Spanish provinces; rebellions broke out 
at home, defeats followed in Italy; Turenne and Conde 
proved too much for the degenerate Spanish command- 
ers and their enfeebled soldiers. When, finally, Philip 
IV. sought to terminate his foreign wars by a peace, in 
1648, he was compelled to acknowledge the entire inde- 
pendence of Holland, or the United Provinces, and by 
the Treaty of the Pyrenees, a few years later, England 
was confirmed in her possession of Dunkirk and Ja- 
maica, and important concessions were made to France 
for her evacuation of Catalonia. Philip IV. at last 
shuffled off his accumulated heritage of woe and war 
and departed this life in the year 1665, after a reign 
of forty-four years. 

The reigns of the three Philips, w T e may truly say, 
are indelibly impressed with the great decline in the 
once splendid fortunes of Spain. Along with the Jews 
and the Moors, whom they had driven out of the land, 
went also a great measure of the country's prosperity. 
It was to a child only four years of age, that the throne 
of Spain was left by the demise of Philip IV., and thus 
for years the country was governed by a quasi regency, 
the queen mother choosing her favorites more from their 
personal charms in her eyes, than their ability to rule a 
nation or recuperate its exhausted finances. Even the 
Spaniards, so long accustomed to grovel at the feet of 
ro3 r alty and endure with hardly a protest the most 
frightful indignities — even the common people, but par- 
ticularly the nobility, complained of the degradation of 
the court. It was not probably more degraded then 
than it had been for the previous hundred years; but it 
was weak; while the people could endure positive ras- 
cality in their sovereigns, and thrive under ordinary 







206 SPAIN GETTING EXHAUSTED. 



abuses, yet they despised a weak and vacillating ruler 
or policy. Charles II., the successor to his father, 
Philip IV"., was both weak and wicked; but he could 
not, fortunately, perpetuate his imbecility in the person 
of an heir, and so arose at his death the question of the 
Spanish succession. That great schemer, Louis XIV. 
of France, - who had married a daughter of Philip, the 
Infanta Maria Teresa, for years plotted to place his son 
upon the throne of Spain. He even sought the over- 
throw of Charles II., the sovereign in legitimate suc- 
cession, and finally became so urgent that England and 
the Protestant States placed a check upon his ambitions, 
for a time, by forming what was known as the Grand 
Alliance. But the wily and persistent Louis managed 
to keep the issue before the world during Charles' long 
reign of thirty-five years, and in 1697 negotiated the 
Peace of Ryswick, in order to allay the suspicions of 
his neighbors, and also, more secretly, the Partition 
Treaty, by the terms of which the King of England con- 
sented to the division of the Spanish dominions among 
the various claimants; of whom King Louis was of 
course the chief and most to be benefited. Upon the 
death of the unfortunate Charles, in the year 1700, 
there came the opportunity to Louis, which he had so 
long anticipated, of placing a scion of his house upon 
the Spanish throne. His claim was based upon his 
first marriage to the Infanta Maria Teresa; but he 
could not for himself, of course, urge the succession, 
neither for his son, who was to succeed him, if he lived, 
upon the throne of France. But for his grandson, 
Philip of Anjou, he laid claim to the throne of Spain, 
as a collateral heir, who had been named by Charles 
II. in his will. Philip, Louis' grandson, was crowned 
King of Spain earl}' in 1701, but his title was contested 
by the Archduke Charles of Austria, whose mother 









SPAIN GETTIMG EXHA USTED. 207 

held the same relationship to the throne as Philip's 
grandmother. Archduke Charles took the field, and 
eventually England and the United Netherlands joined 
with Austria, against Louis XIV. and France. Thus 
resulted the notorious "War of the Spanish Succes- 
sion," which was so calamitous for France especially, 
and in which the Prince Eugene and the English Duke 
of Marlborough, gained such splendid victories over the 
French. The miserable war dragged on for thirteen 
years, only being terminated by the Peace of Utrecht, 
in 1713, confirmed by the Peace of Eastatt, the follow- 
ing year. It is well known that Marlborough gained the 
victories of Blenheim, Mallpaquet, etc., and inflicted 
incalculable damage upon the French; but for these 
victories, which were of no direct material gain to Eng- 
land, the duke and his heirs have drawn from the 
British treasury millions and millions of British gold. 
However, the indirect gains to England were as usual 
very large, for she came out of the wars with Gibraltar 
(which she obtained by stratagem in 1704, and has ever 
since retained as a spoil of war) with Minorca, St. 
Christopher in the West Indies, Hudson Bay, New- 
foundland and Acadia. Spain was confirmed in her 
possessions of the home country and the West Indies 
and two Americas, Naples, the Duchy of Milan, and 
the Netherlands went to the emperor. Meanwhile, the 
bone of contention was removed by the death of Leo- 
pold, and the succession to his throne of the Archduke 
Charles, who was thus thrown out of the race. In this 
manner it came about that a scion of the House of 
Bourbon replaced the defunct House of Hapsburg on 
the throne of Spain, where it had reigned, in the per- 
sons of Charles V. (or Charles I.) Philip II., III. and 
IV., and Charles II. 

The House of, Bourbon connected collaterally with 







208 SPAIN GETTING EXHA USTED. 

the House of Hapsburg, and the lines of Castile and 
Aragon, has remained in possession, with slight inter- 
missions, ever since; and a Bourbon, in the jperson of 
the Boy King, Alfonso XIII., sits upon the throne 
to-day. 

In the year 1714, Philip of Anjou, now known as 
Philip V., lost his wife and was immediately married 
to Elizabeth Farnese of Parma, who exerted an influ- 
ence over him which his first consort never possessed. 
She became the ruling spirit of the kingdom, though 
there was still no lack of favorites, such as Alberoni, 
who was such a decided failure in 'his foreign negotia- 
tions that he was deposed and exiled. When Louis 
XIV. died, in 1715, Philip became smitten with a de- 
sire of uniting the two thrones of France and Spain in 
the person of his royal self; but was held in check by 
England's fleets and the provisions of the Treaty of 
Utrecht. Six years later, however, the royal houses of 
France and Spain became further united by the be- 
trothal of the Prince of the Asturias to the daughter of 
the Duke of Orleans, and of the daughter of Philip's 
wife, Elizabeth, to Louis XV.; the best he could do, 
under the circumstances. 







SEVERAL SPANISH MOJSTAECHS. 209 



XVII. 

SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 

Philip V. narrowly escaped being drawn into the 
troubles of the Austrian Wars of Succession, which 
would only have been in the nature of poetic justice, 
nfter all. His sympathies, at all events, were not with 
the heroic Maria Teresa, who for so many years resisted 
trie combinations entered into against her by other 
nations, and who finally won what were unquestion- 
ably her rights. The Spanish king even went so far as 
to send his troops into Italy, where they might at will 
co-operate with the allies as against the Austrians; but 
his designs were frustrated, it is declared, by English 
vigilance. It would seem, irufact, that the moribund 
Spain, while even now in the last throes, wished to 
snatch at everything in sight, and, not content with 
1 or own troubles, would have mixed in those of France, 
Austria, and the other powers. "The wolf loses his 
teeth, but not his inclinations." This is true of Spain 
as of no other country. Having tasted the glories of 
the "Golden Age" of Charles V. and his son, when 
treasures without stint came flowing into Spain, and 
her fleets whitened the seas of both hemispheres, she 
could do no less than growl and show her toothless 
jaws when fair spoils for war passed by. Philip V. 
died in 1746, of apoplexy, after a reign in the main 
beneficial to his country, when contrasted with those of 
other kings, and was succeeded by his son Ferdinand. 
Indolent, melancholy, and inclined to peace, Ferdinand 






210 SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 

was a blessing to Spain, inasmuch as he was not posi- 
tively and malignantly disposed for war. Two years 
after his arrival at royal dignities he was a signatory 
to the treaty of Aix la Chapelle, in 1748, by which a 
general peace was proclaimed. Pie was fortunate in 
his ministers, Ensenada and Carajal, though the former 
was pro-Gallic in his sympathies, and the latter a stren- 
uous Spaniard. He remained aloof from the Seven 
Years' War, when Prussia and England were opposed 
to Germany, Austria, France and Sweden; and even 
resisted the tempting bait held out by England of the 
cession of Gibraltar to Spain if she would cast her for- 
tunes into the scale as against her opponents. There 
was never a time, perhaps, when Spain came so near 
recovering her own property, so long retained by Eng- 
land, as on this occasion; but notwithstanding the 
great temptation, Ferdinand and Spain maintained 
their neutrality unimpaired. 

This was in the year 1756; in 1758 his wife died, by 
which event he was prostrated with grief. From tLe 
time of her death, he withdrew from all participation 
in the cares of state, and buried himself in his palace 
of Villa Viciosa, from which he emerged only to be 
carried to his last resting-place. Spain had been vexed 
and harried by so many sovereigns actually and act- 
tively detrimental to her best interests, that the con- 
templation of one whoso character was at least nega- 
tively virtuous is a grateful relief. Ferdinand VI. 
was not positively great, but he was capable and well 
meaning; and he showed by his manner of life, his 
frugality and plain living, his active interest in the 
welfare of his countn^'and especially in reducing the 
total volume of debts that were crushing out the na- 
tional existence, that be had at heart the best interests 
of his kingdom. For the first time in centuries — it has 






SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 211 

been written — Spain found herself in annual receipt of 
an income larger than her expenditures; and though it 
has been charged that Ferdinand brought about this 
happy result by withholding payments for debts in- 
curred in former reigns, and retrenching where he 
should have expended for reforms; yet on the whole it 
was a condition which resulted in great benefit to 
Spain. 

The throne fell to his half-brother, who, as Charles 
III., brought to the administration of affairs his inval- 
uable experience as King of the Sicilies. He made at 
least one great mistake, however, soon after his acces- 
sion, in joining his fellow Bourbons of France in what 
was known as the "Family Compact," a secret treaty 
which Mr. Pitt at once suspected, and resented by a 
virtual declaration of war against Spain tho following 
year. To war against England was always to court 
defeat; more than that, it may be said that jvhen she 
arrayed her forces on the other side, Spain nearly 
always came to grief. The inevitable swiftly followed, 
and though the Bourbon allies invaded Portugal, in a 
vain attempt to compel her to join with them, yet 
Britain's victories at sea and beyond the ocean soon 
brought them to their knees. It was during this war, 
in 1762, that Spain for the first time lost her hold on 
Cuba and that Havana fell to the English, when Morro 
Castle was taken, after a long siege and desperate resis- 
tance, and the "Pearl of the Antilles" changed owners. 
By the treaty at Paris, the next year, 1763, Great 
Britain seems to have come out of the affair with the 
greater portion of the spoils — receiving Florida in ex- 
change for Havana and Cuba, part of Louisiana, sev- 
eral West Indian islands, Canada, and valuable conces- 
sions for the cutting of logwood in Campeche Bay. 
England was so well satisfied with the outcome of the 







212 SEVERAL SPANISH MOKARCHS. 



attempts to form a i 'family alliance/' that she com- 
placently viewed the frantic efforts of Prime Minister 
Grimaldi — successor to General Wall, an Irishman — at 
reviving the compact by a system of intermarriages. 
Charles himself had suffered former defeats at the 
hands of the English; but he probably knew the futil- 
ity of resistance to such a power, and wisely refrained 
taking part in any active demonstration. Having now 
two foreigners, Grimaldi and Squilacci, the latter min- 
ister of finance, managing his affairs, Charles III. soon 
experienced a sensation in an uprising of his people, 
who were incensed at the rise in prices consequent upon 
some measure of the finance minister. The king fled 
to his pleasure palace of Aranjuez, leaving his minis- 
ters to arrange a truce as best they might, but by his 
appointment of the Count d'Aranda as chief, he 
placated the people and brought about a peace. Under 
the last-named individual, the Jesuits, who were 
charged with being the authors of Spain's misery at 
that time, were finally expelled the country in which 
their order had its birth, and where they had secretly 
controlled kings and ministers at their pleasure. As 
Charles refused to interfere, Count Aranda surrounded 
the Jesuit colleges with troops, at a preconcerted time, 
read to the astonished inmates the royal decree of ex- 
pulsion, and had them hurried to the coasts, where they 
were embarked for Italy, and where they suffered 
greatly. Portugal, as well as France, bad already de- 
creed their expulsion ; Sicily had thrust them out, and 
also the Spanish colonies; and finally Pope Clement 
XIV. decreed the suppression of their order. "Spain 
for the Spaniards" had always been the cry of her 
fervid patriots ; as far 'back as the time of the Goths 
resistance had been made to Rome's claims; Isabella 
and Ferdinand, notwithstanding they had been invested 



SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCH®. 213 

with the title of "Most Catholic," by the Pope of Rome, 
yet resisted his intrusion into the ecclesiastical affairs 
of their kingdom, to some extent; Ferdinand VI. 
had sequestrated revenues hitherto sent to Rome, and 
now Charles III. had expelled one of the most influ- 
ential orders that held fealty to the pope above loyalty 
to the king. 

Both Grimaldi and Aranda were retired from office, 
and in 1775 there succeeded Don Jose Monino, better 
known as the Count of Florida Blanca, who has some- 
times been alluded to as a friend of the United States 
because, when the American colonies were struggling 
for freedom from British rule, he cast Spain's sword 
into the balance against Great Britain. This, how- 
ever, must be taken with discretion and reserve. That 
Le did declare against Great Britain, four years later, 
and in 1775 did much to harass that country and create 
a suspicion that he would favor the American "rebels," 
is undoubtedly true. But he did not assist them ; on 
the contrary he really was not in favor of the motives 
and acts prevailing across the Atlantic, fearing their 
injurious effect upon the Spanish colonies. But still, 
he finally threw Spain into alliance with France, who 
was openly assisting the Americans, and their com- 
bined fleet threatened the coast of England; riding 
saucily within sight of her shores. Two continents 
shared in the disasters of warfare, simply because three 
countries in Europe could not agree in their policies. 
While the combined French and Spanish forces laid 
strenuous siege to Gibraltar, the fleets of England were 
scouring the seas in search of their opponents. In 1781, 
finding that the Americans were receiving assistance 
by getting supplies from a small island in the West 
Indies (St. Eustatius,) Lord Rodney reduced and took 
it, capturing spoils to the amount of more than fifteen 






214 SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 

million dollars. It mattered not that the island of 
Eustatius belonged to the Dutch, then supposed to be at 
peace with Great Britain, it was suspected of giving 
aid to the rebels, and so was destroyed. England's 
hand was heavy against whatever nation opposed her 
or her policy. Her fleets were her strong support, and 
when, finally, the squadrons of Lord Rodney, consist- 
ing of thirty-six sail-of-the-line, met that of Count cle 
Grasse, having under him thirty-four sail, there ensued 
a terrible sea battle and contest for supremacy in those 
seas. The French squadron was almost annihilated, 
the flagship of the admiral, the splendid Ville de Paris, 
which had been presented to Louis XV. by tbe people 
of Paris, and was one of the finest ships of the century, 
was taken a prize by the British, and carried into 
Jamaica. It was for the capture of this island, taken 
from the Spaniards in the previous century, that the 
French fleet was to have combined with the Spanish—- 
then sailing southward to join it from Cuba — and but 
for the opportune arrival of Rodney, the English would 
probably have lost beautiful Jamaica, which has re- 
mained, in consequence of his victory, an English pos- 
session to this day. By this victory also French power 
in the West Indies was broken, and their insular pos- 
sessions there number but two or three at present, as 
against three times that number a little more than a 
hundred years ago. The shattering of the fleet that 
bad carried succor to the Americans fighting at York- 
town, and for the return of which they were still 
anxiously looking, was of great moment to those Amer- 
icans who, but for French assistance, might never have 
won their independence at all. But England, harried 
as she was by fleets Spanish and fleets French, yet held 
her own on the ocean, as she has ever done since first 
she had a navy and British sailors to man it. She won 



SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 215 

her great supremacy by might of these ships, and it is 
to her sailors more than to her soldiers that she owes 
her invincible and unassailable attitude to-day. Mean- 
while, the Spaniards struggled most desperately to 
secure possession of Gibraltar, and aided by the French 
they assailed it again and again. But though for a 
long time cut off from succor, the commander of the 
little garrison, General Elliot, kept his seven thousand 
men alert to repel every advance of the enemy. They 
suffered from red-hot shot, from the assaults of what 
were thought to be impregnable batteries, and finally 
from the exhaustion of their provisions. Though pro- 
tracted through several years the siege of Gibraltar be- 
came finally merely a blockade, which was eventually 
broken by Lord Howe; though hostilities continued up 
to the time of the declaration of peace, in 1783. That 
was Spain's last effort to- reg&in possession of their 
cherished rock of defense, though they have never 
ceased to hope for the eventual recession to them of a 
coign of vantage to England, which at the s^me time is 
such a menace to their own coast, and a standing 
reproach to those who suffered it to slip frcm their 
hands in 1704. 

By the famous Peace of Versailles, concluded in 
1783, France, Spain and Great Britain agreed to bury 
the hatchet of war; and coincidently also the rebellious 
colonies of Britain were confirmed in their pretensions, 
acquiring undisjjpted right to territory extending from 
Canada to the Floridas, and from the Atlantic to the 
Mississippi. Incidentally, Spain had contributed to 
this humiliation of England; but she herself had come 
out of the contest shorn of power and prestige on the 
ocean, as well as her great ally, and none now disputed 
Britain's claim to be called the mistress of the seas. 
Rebellions in her colonies were the result of her relaxed 



216 8E VERA L SPA FISH MONARCHS. 

vigilance a broad, and Spain had to exert herself to sup- 
press an insurrection in Peru, under Tupac Amaru, a 
descendant of the Incas murdered by Pizarro. Peru had 
then been a conquered territory for more than three 
hundred years, and it was thought that the ancient 
spirit of the Iucas, which had brought the country to 
such a pitch of native civilization and refinement, be- 
fore the coming of the Spaniards, was crushed utterly 
to earth. But this descendant from the Sons of the 
Sun, kept his armies in the field the greater part of two 
years, and during that time defied the efforts of Spain 
to subdue him. He was at last captured, and in accor- 
dance with the cruel policy of Spain was put to the tor- 
ture, compelled to witness the slaughter of his own 
family and then to suffer an ignominious death. This 
outbreak was but an indication of what was soon to 
come; of the truly continental character of the rebellion 
that was to sweep South America from the Caribbean 
Sea to Patagonia, and eventually deprive Spain of the 
last vestige of her possessions on that continent. Dur- 
ing the remainder of Charles' reign there was compar- 
ative peace in the land; but the Gibraltar ownership, 
which still safe like a leaden weight upon the Spanish 
stomach, nearly brought the nation again into conflict 
with England; but it was waived, and has been so 
red by successive reigns and administrations, until 
it seems now like an integral portion of Britain's pos- 
sessions, with which she would no sooner part than 
with Canada or Nova Scotia. In fact, in one sense, 
Gibraltar is of greater value to Great Britain than even 
Canada, guarding as it does the approaches to the 
Mediterranean, and forming but one of those stepping- 
stones around the globe, by which John Bull measures 
his world-wide properties. Under Florida Blanca 
Spain threw off to some extent the terrible incubus of 







SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCUS. 217 



the Inquisition, but this blight upon her life and prog- 
ress was not entirely obliterated until after Ferdinand 
Y1L was sent to his last account, there to meet the 
founders and supporters of this iniquitous contrivance. 
There was a falling off in the number of victims, for- 
tunately, which may have been owing, not so much to 
the spread of tolerance, as the exhaustion of the supply 
of heretics, grown wary and wise. 

The national spirit of Spain has not shown any indi- 
cation of a rennuciation of the inquisitorial methods; 
only under pressure of their neighbors, who really have 
made some progress in civilization, they do not dare 
practice those methods in this nineteenth century. 
Spam's ideas, and Spain's government are about the 
same as in the time of Charles V. and Philip II. and 
nothing has shown this more forcibly than the recent 
war (1898), by which she lost, through adherence to 
those ideas and traditions, the last of her colonial pos- 
sessions in America, Count Florida Blanca was an 
enlightened statesman, from the Spanish standpoint, 
and inaugurated may reforms, such as improvement of 
the commerce and manufactures of the country, repeal- 
ing some of the most onerous of the internal imposts, 
reviving agricultural industries, building roads, and 
constructing canals. He thus came in contact with and 
was opposed by the conservative people of the country, 
who tried in vain to have him removed from office; but 
he was not only retained by Charles III., so long as 
that monarch was alive, but afterward by his successor, 
Charles IV. 

When at last Charles III. died, in the year 1788, 
he left his country somewhat in advance of what it 
was when he entered upon his duties. Like Ins 
illustrious predecessor, Charles IV., when he came to 
the throne, he was versed in . affairs of state, and for a 



218 SEVERAL SPANISH MONARCHS. 

while continued his policy. He was forty years of age, 
and, until he allowed Florida Blanca to be superseded 
by the infamous Godoy, about. 1702, he showed the 
result of training and experience in his treatment of 
great questions. He had need enough of all his powers 
and of the best of counsellors, in those troublous times 
during which the bloody French revolution was raging, 
and the results of which w r ere so disastrous to the Bour- 
bons of France. Gradually, however, but surely, his 
queen became prominent in the court counsels; his 
great minister, Florida Blanca, was taken from office 
and imprisoned, and after a short period under the aged 
Aranda, who was used merely as a blind to further 
their designs, the queen's party finally set the latter 
adrift and raised their favorite, Godoy, to his place. 



CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 219 
XVIII. 

CHARLES IV., FERDINAND VII., AND ISABELLA II. 

Although Spain might have held aloof from 
taking part in the bloody revolution that now devas- 
tated her neighbor beyond the Pyrenees, fair France, 
yet it was not likely that Charles IV., himself a Bour- 
bon, could remain neutral in a struggle that involved 
the fortunes of the Bourbons of France, and brought 
the head of the house and his queen to the scaffold. 
The insane behavior of the revolutionists in declaring 
war against every nation that did not recognize their 
claims soon involved them with other powers, and it 
w r as not long before, in addition to a civil war to man- 
age, they had threatening them the perils of the 
European coalition. Forces of Spain and Portugal 
even invaded the south of France, and in the north 
Austrian and English troops crossed the border. It 
was at this time that there rose to prominence that man 
whose wonderful career held- spellbound the attention 
of the world, Napoleon Bonaparte, who rescued Toulon 
from foreign hands, and soon made- his impress on the 
country. The fortresses captured by the Spanish and 
Portuguese were regained, and Spain itself was invaded 
by French soldiers under ^General Dugommier, whose 
successes were so great that the country was forced to 
sue for peace. In 1795, by the Treaty of Basle, Spain 
became practically an ally of France, and brought upon 
her devoted head the fury of England, especially when, 
the next year, she concluded an alliance with the revo- 
lutionary republic. Exposed as she was, with a vast 
coastline, and with defenceless colonies, Spain was 
ever an easy prey to a great maritime power like 
England, and she soon suffered terribly for her folly. 










220 CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 



By the great naval action off Cape St. Vincent, the 
Spanish fleet was shattered, defeated, and later block- 
aded in the harbor of Cadiz, while Spain's coasting 
trade was almost entirely destroyed. In the West In- 
dies she lost the rich, island of Trinidad, which has ever 
since remained in English possession, but succeeded in 
preventing Porto Rico from falling into the hands of 
General Abercrombie, who attempted its reduction. 
Many have ascribed Spam's losses and her puerile 
policy to the Queen's favorite, Manuel Godoy, who had 
found favor in her eyes on account of Lis physical at- 
tractions, and at the age of twenty-five was created 
prime minister and "Duke of Alcudia." He was now 
known as the "Prince of Peace," from having been 
instrumental in bringing about the disgraceful alliance 
with France in 1705. Through pressure brought to bear 
upon her by Bonapartef*Spain was forced to invade her 
neighbor, Portugal, and her successes were made the 
means by which French troops were introduced into the 
peninsula. Godoy w r as now at the height of his power, 
for, possessing the affections of the queen, and through 
tie confidence of the king, he was given in mar- 
iiage a princess of the royal family and elevated to the 
highest station. It is to the discredited the Spa:, 
character that although he was known to be of low and 
vulgar birth, and bad come to power merely as the 
on's paramour, yet he was, many years after, con- 
ed in his vast possessions and titles, and allowed to 
ret in to Spain and enjoy Lis ill-gotten plunder. He 
lived to extreme old age, though his life was frequently 
threatened and in danger, and died in 1851, covered 
with honors arid immensely rich. 

It would be wearisome to follow the meanderings of 
Bonaparte's policy during which he made a cat's-paw of 
poor Spain, and held her to this agreement and that, 









CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 221 

all the time bleeding her of resources, and finally 
plunging her into the disastrous war with England, 
by which she was prostrated in the dust. In 1804 she 
declared w^ar against England, forced thereto by 
Napoleon, and events rapidly led up to that disastrous 
event in her history by which she forever lost her 
naval supremacy at the battle of Trafalgar, October 25, 
1805. By Nelson's splendid victory the combined fleets, 
the French under Villeneuve, and the Spanish under 
Gravina, were destroyed, and Napoleon's plans for an 
invasion of England brought to naught. Tied as he 
was to Bonaparte's war-chariot, compelled to do his 
bidding without receiving any share of spoils or .glory, 
it was not strange that Charles (or rather his favorite, 
Godoy) should enter into a secret understanding with 
England by which, in combination with Portugal an 
effort was to be made to stay the march of the uni- 
versal conqueror. Becoming aware of this, Bonaparte 
made it an excuse for demanding yet greater conces- 
sions from Spain, forcing from her the little kingdom 
of Etruria,. by the treaty of Fontainebleau, and planned 
the partition of Portugal. About this time Napoleon's 
schemes were greatly prompted by domestic dissensions 
in the royal family of Spain. Godoy pretended to dis- 
cover a plot by which the Prince of the Asturias, 
Ferdinand, son of the king and heir, meditated taking 
his father's life and seizing the throne. Whether or 
not this was so seems never to have been explained, 
but the Prince of Peace made t* e occasion a pretext for 
having Ferdinand imprisoned, and afterward release**, 
acting in the character of mediator and peace-maker m 
the royal family. This incident led to the dissensions 
by which both Charles and Ferdinand, later on, were 
induced to throw 7, themselves into the arms of Bona- 
parte, and gave him the pretext by which their throne 






222 CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 

was declared vacant and given to his brother Joseph. 
Bonaparte had already obtained a footing in Portugal, 
and had forced the flight of its royal family to Brazil. 
Marching an army to the Pyrenees, he caused the royal 
family of Spain so much alarm that they also meditated 
flight to Mexico; but the populace of Madrid discover- 
ing their intentions, and ascribing all their ills to 
Godoy, rose in rebellion and particularly sought the 
life of the arch -conspirator, who only escaped most nar- 
rowly from a violent death. The weak king, deferring 
to the popular will, abdicated the throne in favor of his 
son, and thus Ferdinand VII. became King of Spain in 
1808. As Prince of the Asturias he had, he thought, 
the favor of Napoleon, and he relied implicitly upon 
his promises of support ; to such an extent, indeed, that 
he sent his troops back to B Portugal, and placed them un- 
der the command of the French general, Junot. He 
was not long to remain in ignorance of Bonaparte's in- 
tentions, however. Bonaparte had resolved that no 
scion of the house of Bourbon should sit upon the throne 
of Spain, or indeed of any European kingdom. In or- 
der to make his peace with Bonaparte, Ferdinand set 
out to meet him, when the former had come south as 
far as Bayonne, and by cunningly laid plans both he 
and his father were lured to that place, over the border 
on French soil. Then ensued one of the most disgrace- 
ful episodes in the annals of royalty, for Charles de- 
clared that his abdication was forced and that Ferdi- 
nand was not king, even in name; while the latter 
held to his father's intention and the people's will. 
Godoy and the queen mother also took part in this 
family quarrel, when accusations and recriminations 
were made which showed the corruption and weakness 
of this group of rulers with which poor Spain had been 
afflicted. Bonaparte cut short the quarrel by announc- 






CHARLES IV, FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 223 

3 >g that neither Charles nor Ferdinand should return 
f > govern Spain, and in the end it was decided that 
both should resign their claims in consideration of large 
annuities, and remain virtually prisoners in France. 
Meanwhile, French troops, under Marat, were in 
I rid, where, as s'oon as the people there heard of the 
delivery of the throne over -to Bonaparte, they rose and 
massacred many of them, and were only checked after 
stern and bloody reprisals. The French emperor then 
assembled representatives of the nobility, and presented 
them with a constitution he had prepared for the 
government of Spain, together with his brother Joseph 
as king. By this time one hundred thousand French 
troops were on the soil of Spain, and the country was 
soon overrun, but it was not without hard fighting that 
Joseph Bonaparte reached the capital of his new king- 
dom, Madrid, and no sooner had he arrived there than 
he was forced to retreat upon the French frontier and 
stand at bay, awaiting reinforcements. His invasion 
and the forcing upon them of a king who had no ties 
or sympathies with Spain, caused the Spaniards to rise 
in rebellion all over the land ; everywhere tbey resisted 
to the death, and among the celebrated and heroic de- 
fenses is that of Saragossa, where the women fought 
with the men in repelling the enemy from their homes. 
No one can deny that the Spaniards are possessed of 
bravery, that they are valiant even to rashness, and 
need but good leaders to become almost invincible. 
But soon it appeared that their bravery was to avail 
them little, for one hundred and fifty thousand French 
soldiers were hurled against them, from many points 
and under skillful commanders. If it had not been for 
England's assistance, the map of Spain might to-day 
be different from what it is. That astute power saw 
the advantage to be gained by fighting Bonaparte from 






224 CHARLES IV. FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 

Portugal and on the soil of Spain, and by the time the 
massacre had occurred at Madrid, English soldiers had 
landed in the former country and were on their way to 
co-operate with the enemies of France. A small army 
of twepty five thousand, under Sir John Moore, having 
been caught in the interior far from its base of sup- 
plies, began a retreat to the coast, followed by the 
French in overwhelming numbers. Brought to hay just 
at the point where his troops were to embark, Moore 
turned and fought the brilliant battle of Corunna, gain- 
ing a victory but losing his own life. The English 
troops embarked for England, but soon after a small 
force under Wellington was marching northward 
through Portugal toward the Spanish frontier. This 
force was augmented by English and Portuguese troops, 
until finally the Duke of Wellington had command of 
some sixty thousand, and with this army made that 
memorable campaign against the French which resulted 
in the liberation of both Spain and Portugal from the 
invaders. By the construction of those great military 
works known as the lines of Torres Vedras, from which 
he advanced at will, and behind which he retreated as 
necessity compelled, Wellington became invincible, 
with these earthworks always at his back. From the-n 
as his bases, he advanced by degrees until he had 
finally driven the French under Junot and Soult from 
Portugal, and crossed the frontier. Massena was com- 
pelled to seek refuge in Spain, bloody battles were 
fought, on both sides great bravery was manifested; 
but the Spaniards fought better as detached bands of 
guerrillas than as armies. The miserable war dragged 
on for years. It was in 1808 that Bonaparte had sought 
to impose his brother upon the Spanish throne, but it 
was not until 1818 — though he had been twice driven 
from Madrid, meanwhile — that he was finally defeated 



CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 225 

in his purposes. We have not space to detail the many 
battles, sieges, skirmishes; to describe the unutterable 
misery, the terrible devastation; let it suffice to say 
that in 1812 Wellington entered the capital, Madrid, 
and Joseph Bonaparte was virtually a fugitive. The 
entire Spanish forces were now placed under Welling- 
ton's command; for hitherto he had been fighting 
Spain's battles mainly with English and Portuguese. 
The crucial event took place at Vittoria, whither 
Joseph had fled after being driven out of Burgos. 
Here his army for awhile stood stoutly, but the trained 
allies were now invincible, and after a prolonged re- 
sistance Joseph's army was driven from the field and 
finally over the frontiers of France and Spain, King 
Joseph in the van and in as pitiable plight as any of 
his soldiers. He had lost a kingdom he never desired, 
in which he was only retained by the commands of his 
imperial brother, a throne propped up by bayonets, and 
which, when these were removed, fell to the ground. 
The reduction of Pampeluna and San Sebastian fol- 
lowed, and then western Spain having been cleared of 
the enemy, Wellington turned his attention to the east, 
to Catalonia, where the French successes had been more 
pronounced. 

Meanwhile, the politicians of the country had not 
benefited by the terrible lessons of experience, but still 
went on with their plotting and scheming, and Spain 
was rent with dissensions. Constitution after constitu- 
tion was promulgated, but the people paid little heed, 
and when, in 1813, their captive sovereign was restored 
to them, they forgot all they had endured for sake 
of liberty /and forged anew 7 the chains that held them 
to the throne. Base and despicable as this white- 
livered scion of a feeble sire and wanton mother had 
shown himself , yet he was received as a hero by the pop- 






226 CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AXD ISABELLA. 

ulace, who united in doing him honor all over the land. 
He was doubtless a representative Spaniard, for the 
Spanish people hailed him as such; yet to no noble act 
of his, no brave deed, no generous expression could any 
one point. But the people were blinded by the glamour 
of the throne, by the prestige attaching to their royal 
house, and dearly were they to pay for their unreason- 
ing attachment to a worthless scoundel, now returned 
to sovereignty as Ferdinand VII. One of the first 
things he did was to abrogate the Constitution, proba- 
bly because it was the best Spain ever had ; his second 
act was to reinstate the Inquisition, his third to banish 
or imprison all who had opposed in any way his return. 
His next attempt at grasping the reins of royalty was 
to send troops to subdue the now rebellious colonies in 
America, the inhabitants of which, with more of man- 
liness than his home subjects, aimed at a greater degree 
of independence. They all succeeded, as we know, in 
gaining that independence, and all during the years of 
Ferdinand's reign — all except Cuba and Porto Rico, 
which were to be liberated by the intercession of a 
government not then conisdered important enough to 
merit notice — that of the United States of America. 
Severe and gloomy indeed were the years of this mon- 
arch's sovereignty in Spain, and his subjects had good 
reason to repent their hasty action in recalling him to 
the throne. The French were gone, and no foreign foe 
menaced the nation; but within herself Spain had cause 
enough for sedition and rebellion. The soldiery the 
king would have sent to suppress rebellions in America, 
the seasoned veterans of a war he took no part in, re- 
fused to embark, and finally disaffection became so 
great that in 1819 Ferdinand was compelled to swear 
devotion to the Constitution, to abolish the Inquisition, 
and to inaugurate reforms. Still, the country contin- 






CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 227 

ued disturbed, and when, in 1823, under pretence of 
saving Spain from a revolution, French forces assem- 
bled on the frontier, King Ferdinand gladly welcomed 
them. They invaded Spain a second time, this time in 
the pretended interest of peace, and that they were 
hailed as allies by the majority of the people shows 
how pusilanimous those people were. One hundred 
thousand French soldiers were quartered upon and sup- 
ported by Spain for five long years, in order that a 
miserable despot might be kept on his throne, and the 
liberties of the Spanish people restrained. Even then 
resistance to his policy was so strong that he fled like a 
cur to the French camp, and then, supported by foreign 
bayonets, he proclaimed all his previous professions 
null and void, and put to death many who had sup- 
ported the Constitution. 

His high-handed acts, such as the imprisoning and 
execution of political offenders, and his real weakness, 
which had brought about the loss to Spain of nearly 
all her American colonies, finally made it apparent that 
the greatest blessing to Spain would be a deliverance 
from this cowardly criminal. They had not far to seek 
for a substitute on the throne, and a party was formed 
having as its object the elevation to power of the king's 
brother, Don Carlos. Thus arose the "Carlists," who 
have continued their struggles until the present day, 
and whose frequent attempts to impose their claimant 
upon the throne have resulted so disastrously to Spain. 
When King Ferdinand lost his third wife without hav- 
ing an heir born to him the Carlists took heart that 
their candidate would eventually succeed to the throne. 
When the royal reprobate married again, for the fourth 
time, and a child was born whose paternity has many 
times been called in question, and that child a daugh- 
ter, they did not lose hope; for there was the old Salic 







228 CHARLES IV., FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 



Law by which females were prohibited from sover- 
eignty. But Ferdinand revoked that law by " prag- 
matic sanction/' banished Don Carlos to Portugal, and 
when the child was three years old he died, leaving to 
her a kingdom with an accumulated heritage of woe 
and wickedness. This child was Isabella II., whose 
excesses as a woman finally compelled her abdication as 
a queen; but of that later on. 

As the Queen-regent, Christina, ably supported her 
little princess in her claim to the throne, the contend- 
ing parties came to be known as Carlists and Chris- 
tinos. Don Carlos claimed that the revocations of 
Ferdinand were illegal, and that the ancient law of 
succession as hitherto in force in the kingdoms of 
Casile, Aragon and Navarre, by which no woman could 
inherit the crown, if a male heir were living, was still 
in force. There was, he claimed, a male heir, and he, 
Don Carlos, being the late king's brother, next of age, 
was that heir ! After all, it was merely a question of 
opinion, as to whether a son of a woman known to be 
dissolute should be preferred to the daughter of another 
woman equally loose in her morals. For the amours 
of the wife of Charles IV. with Godoy were notorious, 
and the character of Queen Christina was not held 
above reproach. In fact, her immoralities were only 
exceeded, later on, by those of the illustrious daughter, 
the young princess, who was, to use a simile, the real 
"bone of contention" in connection with the throne. 
If Ferdinand had been a man of moral perceptions and 
mode of life — in other words, not a Spanish sovereign 
— and had left male issue, theCarlist wars might never 
have devastated Spain. If his fourth wife bad been 
ordinarily discreet in her amours she might have held 
the regency until her daughter came of legal age, and 
then have retired with dignity to a merited seclusion. 



CHARLES IV. y FERDINAND AND ISABELLA. 229 

But they were neither moral nor discreet; yet thewoi\<l 
has witnessed v the intercession of foreign powers in the 
support of Isabella II. on "moral grounds," and by 
their aid her generals were enabled finally to compel 
the Carlists to terms. This did not happen until about 
1840, however, and during the time intervening most 
horrible atrocities had been committed on both sides; 
Spanish soil was drenched with blood — and with Span- 
ish blood, at that, shed by Spanish hands. The suc- 
cessful leader of the Christines, Espartero, was elected 
to the guardianship of the Princess Isabella, and her 
mother compelled to abdicate and invited to quit the 
country. Three years later Espartero was driven from 
the country, and the Duke of Baylen selected as guard- 
ian to Isabella, who was then declared of age, though 
but thirteen years old. But the Cortes, in its superla- 
tive wisdom, held that she, being a princess, must of 
course possess superior endowments to ordinary mortals, 
rnd consequently, at this tender age be well qualified 
to rule their country c 

She was crowned as Isabella II., and her mother, the 
ex-regent, invited hack from the country to which she 
was exiled. No woman, says a recent writer, ever 
started life under worse auspices. Her father, Ferdi- 
rand VII., was at once stupid, cruel and treacherous; 
her mother, Christina of Naples, was utterly and irre- 
deemably worthless; while her ancestors, Spanish and 
Neapolitan alike, had for generations been equally re- 
nowned for their vices and their follies. Then, the first 
fourteen years of her life, she was in constant associa- 
tion with some of the worst men and women of Europe. 
She saw her own mother openly outraging all the de- 
cencies of life, plotting, intriguing — nay, even giving 
her lovers rendezvous in the nursery of her children. 
Thus, by every law of heredity she was foredoomed. 



230 ROW THE BOURBON- LINE WAS BROKEN. 



XIX. 

HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 

The two princesses, Isabella, and her sister the 
Princess of the Asturias, were accustomed to see their 
mother's favorite in her boudoir, and were too young 
to understand old Espartero's objections to this state of 
things, when he returned from defeating the Carlists, 
in 1839. At all events, he determined to end it, and 
deprive the queen-regent of both her power and her 
children, in the interests of the national morality. 
After she had been forced to flee, Espartero made her 
return impossible by promptly publishing an account 
of all her crimes and pecadillos, together with an an- 
nouncement of her marriage to one Munoz, a private of 
the royal guard. The queen and her sister were placed 
in the care of Don Arguelles, who seemed to think that 
his only duty was to see that they were clothed and 
fed, and made no attempt to educate them, or fit them 
in any way for the duties of their station. Their gov- 
ernesses w r ere given to understand that lessons were 
unnecessary for princesses, and so complete was their 
ignorance that they could hardly sign their names when 
they were married. Isabella always maintained that 
this was not the result of carelessness on the part of 
their guardian, but was a deliberate plan to render 
them unfit for rule. But, whether intentional or not, 
neither was fit to rule, and when, in 1843 Isabella took 
her place among the sovereigns of Europe, Spain would 
have been much better off if she had taken a wooden 



HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 231 

image from one of the churches and placed it on th^ 
throne; for a wooden image, if not endowed with rea- 
son, yet has no tendencies to crime and passion. When 
at length the minister Narvaez was forced to recall the 
exiled queen mother, for the sake of decency, she so 
overwhelmed the lonely princesses with flattery and 
caresses that they soon knew no will but her own. She 
used them to play upon the sympathies of her subject;-, 
so that when things went well she quite neglected 
them; but when there were symptoms of discontent, 
she had them arrayed in their smartest frocks ad 
taken out to drive about the streets of her capital. 
Christina's daughters, with their high and well-founded 
expectations, were the "two best matches in Europe," 
and their mother determined they should catch hus- 
bands of her own choosing. She had been bought, it 
is claimed, by Louis Philippe, and had resolved her two 
daughters should be married to his two sons. The an- 
nouncement, however, of these "Spanish marriages," 
raised such a storm that finally but one of the daugh- 
ters was married to a son of the King of France, and 
that one the younger, who had no expectations except 
through the failure of her sister to provide for the suc- 
cession in due time. Queen Isabella, then, was mar- 
ried to her cousin, Don Francis, son of the youngest 
brother of Don Carlos and Ferdinand VII. By this 
marriage, the first and third lines of descent from 
Charles IV. were united, and the second, the Carlist, 
was left altogether out of the reckoning. This of 
course, further infuriated the Carlists; but they were 
then practically impotent, and did not indulge in 
another grand outbreak until toward the end of Isa- 
bella's reign, when the first pretender, Carlos V., was 
dead. The younger sister, the Princess of Asturias, 
was married to the Duke of Montpensier, and, after a 



232 HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 

sojourn in Paris, returned to Spain, where she held 
semiroyal state at Seville. Unlike her royal sister, 
the Duchess de Montpensier was a model wife and de- 
voted mother, and, until Isabella was blessed with chil- 
(.reii, she was looked forward to hopefully by many as 
the coining savior of Spain. She and her husband 
Con Id not endure the scandals of the court at Madrid, it 
ii said,, and so retired to the beautiful palace of San 
Telrno, at Seville, where they lived in a luxury so pro- 
1.10x3 aced that Isabella called the Duke "El Rey de 
Sevilfa." When, in 1851, the queen gave birth to a 
daughter, their relative positions were completely 
changed, and the duke resented this to the extent of 
casting doubts xipon the legitimacy of the Infanta. As 
time passed, however, and the people became more and 
more discontented with Isabella's rule, they began 
again to turn their eyes" to Maria Louisa, the Dutchess 
de . ivxontf easier, whose blameless life had won for her 
the hearty respect of all classes. But, unfortunately 
for her, she was popularly supposed to have no will but 
her husband's, and him the Spaniards mistrusted pro- 
foundly. When, therefore, in 1868, the minister, 
Bravo, banished them both, no public protest was 
raised. In the troublesome days that followed, the 
duke tried again and again to secure the Spanish 
crown for his wife, but always in vain. "No son of 
Louis Philippe shall ever reign over us," the people de- 
clared; and nothing would ever induce his wife to 
separate her lot from that of her hxisband. After 
affairs were again settled in Spain — and long after Isa- 
bella herself was banished the kingdom — the duke and 
duchess returned to San Telmo; and only recently her 
remains lay there in state, where she had died, respected 
and revered to the last. 

It is a wearisome task to chronicle, merely, the 







HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 233 



changes of administration, or ministeries, that occurred 
during Isabella's turbulent reign. Both England and 
France were concerned in her choice of a husband, 
even more, perhaps, than the young queen herself. The 
English party was supported by the liberals, or Pro- 
gresistas, and the French claimants by the Moderados 
or Moderates. French intrigues having prevailed, the 
Progresistas were for a time sullen and subdued; but 
vi hen, after the French revolution of 1848, Narvaez car- 
ried proceedings with a high hand against the progres- 
sive party, and its leaders were imprisoned, the strain 
was such that England recalled her ambassador, and, 
until 1850, all diplomatic relations between that coun- 
try and Spain were Suspended. Isabella governed 
through her ministers, and cared little how they gov- 
erned, so long as she was left to her intrigues. Young 
as she was when she became queen and took a consort 
in marriage, she early showed herself a worthy repre- 
sentative of the family that had produced a Ferdinand 
VII. , and the scenes of his court and that of her 
mother's were enacted over again. Now, the Span- 
iards, w^hile the most lenient of people as toward the 
vices of their sovereigns, yet at times have spasms of 
virtue; or rather seize upon the failings of their rulers 
to declare against them. So at Barcelona there was an 
insurrection, in 1854, caused, it was charged, by the 
ambitious and unconstitutional measures of the govern- 
ment, and the scandals associated with the royal house- 
hold, which spread even to the capital, and in which 
some blood was shed. A national junta was formed, 
with old Espartero and O'Donnell dominant, and con- 
stitutional government was again apparently restoi 
Still, the people were disatisfied, and in 1856 Esparteio 
resigned and the queen was induced to proclaim martial 
law. O'Donnell, who came to sole power in 1858, con- 



234 BOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN 

tinued in prominence for five years, during which time 
he strove to divert attention from domestic to foreign 
affairs, by desultory wars. In 1859 he went over to 
Morocco and inflicted severe punishment upon some 
fanatical Africans w T ho had attacked the Spanish 
stronghold and penal colony of Ceuta; and this revival 
of the Hispano-Moriscan wars, when Christian and 
Moslem were once more pitted against each other, de- 
lighted the people and made them content to settle 
down awhile longer to the pursuits of peace. In 1861 
San Domingo was annexed to the kingdom, and for a 
short time it seemed as if Spain's ancient glories were 
to be rebumished, if not revived, and especially when 
she was invited to embark with France in an invasion 
of Mexico. In this latter affair, which proved in the 
end so disastrous to France, and cut short the career of 
Maximilian, she finally refused to co-operate in, having 
had one long and bitter experience in attempting to 
subdue that stubborn nation. In 1863, O'DonnelPs 
ministery was superseded by that of the Marquis of 
Miraflores, during which he had the insurrection in San 
Domingo to deal with. To Miraflores succeeded Arra- 
zola, and he in turn stood aside for Mon, and Pacheco: 
these again gave place to the veteran, Narvaez, and at 
last CTDonnell came to the fore once more. No party, 
however, struck at the root of the evil, either through 
lack of perception or lack of courage ; though the cler- 
ical party had been shorn of much of its power and pos- 
sessions, and the people at large correspondingly bene- 
fited. The trend of the popular reasoning had been 
shown in the outrages upon the monks, in Madrid and 
Catalonia, in 1834 and 1835, and the confiscation of 
church properties. Isabella had sworn to the Constitu- 
t'oa of 1812, enlarged and improved in 1836; but so had 
her ather sworn ; and he had repudiated and retracted, 



HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 235 

as often as he swore. Her lapses, however, were prob- 
ably more through thoughtlessness or ignorance, than 
from the motions which had actuated Ferdinand VII. 
Liberalism constantly gained ground, and fifty years 
ago Republicanism appeared as a complicating factor 
in the government. In 1866 occurred another insur- 
rection, this time of more threatening character than 
any other that had preceded it; but the leaders were cap- 
tured and exiled, and for a time quiet was restored. 
Scarcely had the country time to take breath, when 
another rebellion broke forth, at the capital, the people 
aided by some of the troops proclaiming their desire for 
a republic. This was put down with a stern hand, and 
for the comparatively mild rule of O'Donnell, was sub- 
stituted the military terrorism of Narvaez; when he 
died, the equally severe measures of Gonzales Bravo 
were enforced. Under this last, the Duke and Duchess 
of Montpensier were exiled, the rebel leaders were 
banished in groups, the press was silenced, and matters 
were brought to a crisis. It was at this most inoppor- 
tune moment that Isabella set out for the frontier, to 
meet the emperor and empress of the French; for, net- 
withstanding her immoralities, she had not forfeited the 
good opinion of the royal rulers. And, while she was 
at San Sebastian, where Wellington gave the French 
so severe a drubbing, fifty-five years before, she re- 
ceived the distressing news of the rebellion that her 
forces were not able to withstand. She never returned 
to her capital, nor has she since been there as a queen, 
where she once ruled with so high a hand. Transported 
with impotent fury, she was compelled to abandon her 
country to its fate, and set out for France, where, in the 
capital of that country bordering on her own she has 
found a home in exile ever since. Several Spanish 
sovereigns have found a refuge from exasperated sub- 



- 

236 HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 

jects in France; many French kings have made Eng- 
land their Mecca when troubles have overtaken them; 
but (at least of late years) no English sovereign has tied 
either to France or Spain, to escape trouble at home. 
Back to Spain, then, after the "Pronunciamiento 
of Cadiz," issued on September 19, 1868, came 
trooping the exiles sent out by Bravo and .his con- 
freres, who promptly took their places abroad. Among 
those repatriated subjects was General Prim, who 
directed the movements of the army, in co-operation 
with Admiral Topete of the navy, under whom, at 
Cadiz, the pronunciamiento was initiated. A col- 
lision occurred at Alcolea, between the royalists 
and insurgents, when the latter under Serrano won 
the day, and took nearly all the survivors into 
their ranks, and the reunited soldiery marched 
upon Madrid. The capital was with them, and Ser- 
rano soon established a provisional government, plac- 
ing at its head the former exile, General Prim. Popu- 
lar measures w r ere enacted; reforms, particularly 
ecclesiastical, were decreed ; and all Bourbons, of what- 
ever character or degree, were banished from Spain. It 
would seem that everything now was progressing as the 
most ardent liberal could desire; but still there were 
many malcontents, and about everybody connected with 
the government, as well as outside of it, had a reform 
programme of his own. There was open rebellion in 
1869, followed by defeats for the rebels, with blood- 
shed, and even slaughter. But the provisional govern- 
ment was sanctioned by the Cortes (which was assem- 

1 under the new electoral law permitting universal 
suffrage and vote by ballot) and it continued for two 

rs. The Spaniards were not sufficiently educated, 
however, for a popular government; it is doubtful if 
tbey ever will be; and when the ex-queen resigned all 






WAS BROKEN. 237 

her rights (which amounted to nothing at all) in favor 
of her son, Alfonso, the Prince of the Asturias, the 
setting up of another king was agitated. 

But the Bourbons were then in disfavor, and so the 
crown was offered to the Duke of Aosta, second son of 
Victor Emanuel, King of Italy, and he was seated upon 
the throne in 1871, as Amadeus L, of Savo}\ He had 
not been in position long before he wished himself back 
again, as he was before fate had settled upon him as a 
ruler over the unsteady, turbulent Spaniards. Two or 
three attempts upon his life soon strengthened the con- 
viction that had grown upon him, of his unfitness for 
the office, two years of kingship perfectly satisfied 
him with its honors, as w r ell as its perplexities. Pie 
abdicated, and the throne was declared vacant, and the 
Spaniards again seeking some royal personage w T ho de- 
sired the doubtful honor of being their king. This was 
the opportunity of the Carlists, it was thought by them 
at the time, and they inaugurated the second Carlist 
war. Carlos V. , the first pretender, w as dead, as also his 
eldest son, Carlos VI. ; but the latter had left the suc- 
cession tD his younger brother, "Juan III.," and he 
had turned over the claim to his eldest son, Carlos 
VII., who is the present Don Carlos or Pretender to the 
Spanish crown. He was then young and inexperi- 
enced, and so was betrayed by his generals and finally 
compelled to flee the country; but not until after mas- 
sacres and widespread revolution had horrified the 
country. The republican leaders fought bravely (in 
behalf of they knew not what, but were determined it 
should not be a Carlist) ; Spain was declared in a state 
of siege; a levy was made of one hundred and twenty 
thousand men ; great exertions were put forth. The 
disastrous ending of Don Carles' plans was caused 
mainly by a coup-d'etat, in January, 1874. He mime- 



238 HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN 

diately embarked for England (so long the home of pre- 
tenders to the throne) after delivering himself of a ful- 
some protest, and there came to the rescue, no less a 
personage than Don Alfonso, son of ex-Queen Isabella ! 
General Pavia and his army had declared for him, in 
order, as he said, "to prevent the triumph of anarchy," 
and the people, who had execrated the Bourbons, at 
the departure of his mother, six years before, now wel- 
comed effusively this stripling who was at that time 
the last Bourbon representative in Spain, or he soon was 
in Spain, and, having arrived at the heels of an army 
which had been successful in ousting Don Cartes, he 
was welcomed with acclaim as the "Pacificator King." 
imagine a youth of seventeen stepping in and claiming 
the honors won by old and tried generals on bloody 
fields, and you have the situation at this time. He had 
to do something of the sort, in order to make a dramatic 
entrance into the country — or rather a theatric display 
— and he had evidently well learned his part, and per- 
formed it to perfection. 

Republics and republicans, liberals and conservatives, 
had come and gone, played their little parts upon the 
stage; and it had all eventuated in this: that merely 
another Bourbon had arisen for the long-suffering peo- 
ple to carry on their calloused shoulders. And thus 
this amiable son of an amiable but immoral woman, 
this grandson of a corrupt and intolerant old king, this 
descendant of a royal dynasty founded in idiocy and 
inter-related by marriage to a degree prohibited by 
common sense and the laws of self-preservation, suc- 
ceeded to the throne so long occupied by his ancestors! 
And, as if the line were not already sufficiently degen- 
erate, Alfonso XII. , as he came to be called, made a 
"love-match" with his cousin, Mercedes, daughter of 
the Duke de Montpensier. Fortunately for the country 



HOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 239 

— though of course to his great sorrow, the lovely Mer- 
cedes died before any children were born of this union; 
and after a brief period of perfunctory mourning, the 
young king married again. This time he wedded a 
relative not so closely united by the ties of consanguin- 
ity, the Archducbess Maria Christina, daughter of the 
Archduke Charles Ferdinand, of Austria, and de- 
scended from Ferdinand, the younger brother of great 
Charles V. She is the great-granddaughter of the 
Emperor Leopold II., and the great-great-granddaugh- 
ter of heroic Maria Theresa, the Queen of Hungary and 
Germany, who made such a protracted fight for her 
crown, during the celebrated " Thirty -years' War." So 
her blood was blue enough to satisfy the most haughty 
aristocrat of Spain ; yet there have been opposers to this 
union who have thought otherwise, and maligned the 
queen unnecessarily, as unworthy the honor. But Al- 
fonso had to look abroad for a fitting mate, as there was 
no one of his rank in Spain. It was a delicate ques- 
tion, also; for all the crowned heads of Europe looked 
disdainfully, yet covetously, upcn the throne of Spain. 
In fact, the mere matter of selecting Alfonso's prede- 
cessor — when Amadeus was chosen — brought about the 
offense to Prussia by which the Franco-German war 
was precipitated upon Europe, with all its attendant 
horrors, and terrible disasters to France. It was in 
1870, when the Spanish crown was being hawked about 
Europe for a purchaser, that the provisional govern- 
ment of Spain, at their wits' ends for some one to take 
it off their hands, offered it to the comparatively un- 
known Prince Leopold, of Hohenzollern. This gentle- 
man happened to be related to King William of Prus- 
sia, and, although the latter advised Prince Leopold to 
reject the crown, yet the French emperor found in the 
offer a pretext for declaring war against Prussia; and 







240 SOW THE BOURBON LINE WAS BROKEN. 



thus Spain became the unwitting means of France's 
humiliation. 

No international complications followed the union, 
however, and the queen herself, being an amiable and 
sensible woman, has borne well the onerous exactions of 
royalty. Two daughters were born to the royal pair, 
the elder named after the lamented Mercedes, and both 
sw r eet and charming girls. But during Alfonso's life 
no male heir came to secure his tenure of sovereignty 
and this was a great disappointment. He was ably 
assisted by the great leaders, republican, liberal, and 
conservative, such as Emilio Castelar, Sagasta, Cano- 
vas del Castillo, and others. We should not ignore 
the attempt to found a federal republic, which suc- 
ceeded to the abdication of Amadeus, in 1873, nor 
the strenuous efforts of its founders — efforts exerted 
in vain to unite and coalesce an unstable and incoher- 
ent population, unable to appreciate the advantages of 
freedom. But. with Alfonso, they received back to 
their bosoms the Bourbon "viper" which they had so 
affected to detest, but a few years previously. He was, 
however, comparatively free from venom, having in- 
herited only the desires which, in bis mother, brought 
trouble in their train, but which society, somehow, has 
come to look upon more tolerantly in man. It has been 
said that his licentiousness hastened A If on so 'send; but 
charity has drawn veil over his frailities, and be is now 
worshiped in Spain as -he brave young king who chased 
the specter of Carl ism into its den, who was ever 
thoughtful of his subjects, republican in his tastes, 
simple in his pleasures, and always cheerful and open- 
hearted. These popular qualities, however, did not 
save him from frequent attempts at assassination, any 
more than had gallantry and soldiery devotion saved 
brave old Prim, who had died by violence, in Decern- 






HOW THE BOUBBON LINE WAS BBOKEN. 



241 



ber, 1870, murmuring with his latest breath: u Iam 
dying, but the king (Amadeus) is coming. Long live 
the king!" 

Notwithstanding these brutal protests from the lower 
classes, Alfonso was a popular sovereign; under him 
Spain was at last governed as a constitutional mon- 
archy, the legislative power divided between the king 
and the Cortes or peoples' representatives; suffrage 
was nominally free- — a farce, of course, but the people 
were diverted, and imagined they took an important 
part in the government. There were frequent changes 
cf the ministry, and ministeries came and went; as 
w ual, alternately objects of scorn and acclamation, and 
a! ays the scapegoats of the crowned head, who re- 
ined inviolable and immovable. And it was dis- 
tinctly a great loss to Spain, when his gallant young 
king, after a brief reign of eleven years, was smitten 
by death, and carried to his eternal rest in the royal 
mausoleum of the Escurial. 



242 MODERN' SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 



XX. 

MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 

The death of Alfonso XII. did not leave the Spanish 
throne vacant, for, as it was now hereditary, his daugh- 
ter Mecredes, the Princess of Asturias, succeeded, with 
her mother as Queen Regent. The widowed queen did 
not receive that popular sympathy to which she was 
entilted, a neglect proceeding from dynastic considera- 
tions; but she eventually won support and respect by 
her dignified bearing during those trying months suc- 
ceeding to her bereavement. She, more than any one 
else, knew the extent of her loss, and Spain's, and to 
her more than to any one else were turned the eyes of 
the nation. It seems the irony of fate that the long- 
desired heir of Alfonso XII., upon whose coming he 
had built so much, should after all be posthumous. It 
was on May 17, 1886, that the Queen Regent gave 
birth to a son, who was really born titular king of 
Spain, thereby displacing his sister Mercedes. There 
was great rejoicing, as well as great disturbance; for 
the upholders of royalty saw a pledge of its continuance, 
and the devotees of a republic saw a possible postpone- 
ment of the fruition of their hopes. In the end the 
loyalists prevailed, but not until after much blood was 
spilled, and many insurrectionists exiled to Fernando 
Po, on the coast of Africa. Although Republican 
revolutionary leaders had been shot and others exiled, 
yet around the Queen Regent rallied the best of that 
party, as well as the best of the conservatives and 



MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 243 

liberals. She was supported, not on account of the 
loyalty of her subjects to herself, but because of the 
chivalrous respect for the helpless infant, committed 
to her care as King of Spain. Through thus having a 
chivalric battle-cry, or rallying- point, the royalists 
have maintained their vantage ground, and have even 
gained as the years have passed, owing to the self- 
sacrifice and steady sensibility of the queen-mother, 
who has manifested a devotion, and shown a purity of 
motive unsurpassed in history, and absolutely unimag- 
inable by her Spanish subjects. Accustomed as they 
have been to immorality and licentiousness at court, to 
such reigns as those of the queen of Charles IV., and 
Isabella II., the morality of this "Hapsburg woman" 
came to them as a shock. And, if they can forgive her 
for venturing to be more correct in her deportment than 
her predecessors, and thus in a measure a reproach to 
them, it will be to his mother, the Queen Regent, that 
the present King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. will be in- 
debted for the preservation of his throne. As he comes 
into absolute possession on his sixteenth birthday, when 
he reaches his " majority," he will become actual King 
of Spain, if he lives and the throne is still intact, on 
May 17, 1902. 

Unlike his father, his grandmother, his grandfather 
(and so on, back for generations, we might enumerate,) 
the little Alfonso has the distinct advantage of a loving 
mother's care and oversight. So far as he is not in- 
capacitated by reason of inherited bodily infirmities, 
he is being educated in everything that pertains to the 
dignity of his coming kingship; but it is much to ex- 
pect that one descended from (to go no farther back), 
Alfonso XII., Isabella, Christina of Naples, and Ferdi- 
nand VII., shall escape their legacies of disease, and 
live to a ripe old age. He has been alluded to as "the 



- 




2^4 MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 



hope of Spain ;" but why he is, or how he became that 
''hope" is not very clear to others than devoted royal- 
ists. Still since it seems necessary that Spain have 
some sort of figurehead to worship, "be it alive, or be 
it dead," matters not much; it may be well that this 
object take the shape of an innocent child and his 
widowed mother. Spain does credit to her best feel- 
ings when she bows down at such a shrine; but this is 
not saying that she also does the wisest thing, by any 
means. What she needs, undoubtedly, is a strong, 
sternly-repressive force at the helm of state, represented 
by another Charles Y., or Cardinal Ximenes, without 
their bigotry, and in accord with the enlightened nine- 
teenth century. 

The really patriotic leaders of Spain have been con- 
spicuous for their scarcity ; there are few great Conser- 
vatives like Canovas del Castillo; Republicans like 
Castelar; Liberals like Sagasta. All these rallied to 
the queen's support when she needed them, and all 
have been, in turn, directors of the wavering senti- 
ments of Spain. The virulent, obstinate, even brutal 
ignorance of the masses cannot be penetrated by any 
sentiment of sympathy w r ith high aspiration or disinter- 
ested devotion to principle. This was emphasized when 
the great statesman, Canovas del Castillo, was mur- 
dered by an anarchist. It was, to be sure, an Italian 
assassin that struck down this upright and learned con- 
servative in the full flight of his powers; but he was 
acting in what he took to be the interests of the coun- 
try, when he did the foul deed. That was in 1896, on 
the seventh of June; three years previously Senor 
Sagasta had been stoned by a mob — that same Sagasta 
who was found in power when the late war broke out 
between Spain and the United States. Sagasta has 
held faithfully to his trust, despite the thankless nature 



MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 245 

of it, and it would seem that nothing but a stern sense 
of duty to his country could keep him at a post where he 
has been so maligned and distrusted, hated and scorned. 
He has made a strong fight against the corruption of 
the official classes; he had the misfortune to be in 
charge of affairs when (according to his enemies), 
official corruption and opportunities for peculation were 
greatest. He has endured the obloquy attaching to the 
office of prime minister on account of the unprepared 
condition of Spain's navy — a condition which conduced 
to its ignominious defeat at Santiago and Manila— 
when the real fault lay w r ith the bureaucratic system, 
which has prevailed for hundreds of years. 

It is not our intention to discuss the late war and the 
causes which led up to it, in this connection; for the 
causes and the object of it are given in our "Cuba, its 
Past, Present and Future," issued in this series. The 
object of the present volume is to set forth the unvary- 
ing features of Spanish policy, diplomacy, and cus- 
toms; to show the real cause of Spanish misguidance 
and ultimate deterioration, in its long line of improvi- 
dent and unpatriotic rulers: the methods by which its 
resources have been exhausted and its very life-blood 
sapped during the centuries past. 

The war with Cuba w T as but aa episode; yet it was 
also the legitimate outgrowth of Spain's policies, which 
• — as already explained — have been consistently cruel 
a ?:d unjust toward her colonists, from her earliest occu- 
pation of American territory. 

To make a compact and comprehensive present] 
of Spain as she is to-day, we should take cognizance of 
what she has accomplish in the world of art, of 
tecture, of letters, as well as of diplomacy. Of her 
architecture, Gothic and Moorish, we have obtained 
glimpses as we went along; of her diplomacy, illustri- 






246 MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURfy 

ous examples bave been given in tbe lives of ber rulers 
and statesmen. It may seem, indeed, tbat her history 
has been one long chronicle of the doings of crowned 
heads and their immediate attendants: courtiers, ser- 
vants, diplomats, and especially of their armies. But, 
though they have been neglected hitherto, there are 
commoners — there bave been talented members of the 
body politic — who have won crowns of honor from their 
contemporaries, and whose works have outlasted the 
generations in which they w r ere born. We have seen 
and noted the most shining exemplars of statesmanship; 
we have examined such glorious productions of archi- 
tecture as the mosque of Cordova, the Alhambra, the 
Alcazar of Seville; it remains to note that in the minor 
arts also Spain at one time led the world. The Span- 
ish ceramics were once greedily sought by royalty, and 
to-day occupy conspicuous places in the cabinets of col- 
lectors; the "azulejos," particularly, or the Arabic 
tiles and mosaic tablets, are celebrated. "The beauti- 
ful Hispano-Moresque faiences, with brilliant reflec- 
tions, were, from the fourteenth century, the ornaments 
of princely dressers. During the sixteenth century, 
the manufacture of faience formed perhaps the most 
important industry of Seville, Toledo and Talavem." 
The porcelain factory founded by Charles III. was 
'filled with workmen brought by him from Naples in 
1758. And as to other arts, the "plate?*os," or silver- 
smiths, were at their best in the fifteenth and sixteenth 
centuries, and their wonderful products are still to be 
seen in the churches. Indeed, it is declared that the 
collections of the Spanish churches and cathedrals equal 
the far-famed treasures of the Vatican, and that, if 
brought to a last extremity, Spain could, by the con- 
fiscation and sale of these accumulated riches, provide 
for the payment of a goodly portion of her national 



MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 247 

debt, including the total expenses of the war with 
Cuba. 

These treasures consist of " inlaid shrines, jeweled 
mitres and crucifixes, ecclesiastical robes heavy with 
gems and embroidery, rare statuary, and numer- 
ous paintings by the old masters, together with other 
art objects of inestimable worth. Art treasures of 
almost fabulous value have been accumulating ever 
since the discovery of America, and became more numer- 
roiis and precious than ever under the reign of Philip 
IL, who heaped up in his kingdom the spoils of the Old 
World and the New, bestowing the rarest of them on 
he religious establishments." In this connection we 
may recall the altar of a now obscure convent near 
Burgos gilded with some of the first gold brought home 
by Columbus, and Isabella's missal, in the illuminat- 
ing of which some of that precious gold was used. 
Most of these works of the "illuminadores," their 
illuminated prayer-books, etc., are still extant in 
many churches and cathedrals, the majority dating 
from the sixteenth century. The Spanish ancient em- 
broideries are exquisitely beautiful, the sacerdotal vest- 
ments of rich cathedrals, like those of Seville, Burgos, 
Granada and Toledo, are said to be unsurpassed. The 
art of weaving was ancient in Spain, and the Arabs 
brought it to great perfection as early as the ninth cen- 
tury; while the introduction of Flemish weavers by 
Charles and Philip II., gave Spain possession of rich 
tapestries. As to wood carving, shown in jalousies and 
ceilings, and marble filagree/ 'there is no country in the 
world where carved altar-pieces ma}' be seen that are at 
all comparable to those of Spain. " In art — in the produc- 
tion of works that will live forever — who that has seen 
the inimitable pictures by Murillo, Ribera, Velasquez 
(of which hundreds are yet preserved in Spain), will 



248 MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 

deny this country the honor of having been the birth- 
place of at least several of the "old masters?" 

In literature, it cannot with truth be claimed that 
Spain has been so fortunate as in art. "The backward- 
ness of Spain." says a talented writer, "in all things 
save cruelty, finds a luminous example in the prac- 
tically total absence of Spanish names from the litera- 
ture of the world. Who but a specialist can meution 
more than one world-famous Spanish author? Who 
are Spain's epic, dramatic, narrative and lyric poets? 
Who are her historians, her critics, her novelists? 
Who are her scientific authors (leaving out the 
Arabs) her philosophers, and her essayists? In the 
sixteenth century, out of the thin soil of mediocrity — 
mediocrity in authors which neither gods nor men 
can tolerate— sprang the immortal Cervantes, the only 
writer Spain has produced who can be at all compared 
v/ith the literary geniuses of other peoples? . 
Following Cervantes, arose the first of the dra- 
matists Spain produced: Lope de Vega, to whom is 
given the sole credit for lifting the Spanisn drama into 
a position of dignity in any manner worthy the word. 
Lope de Vega wrote, it is said, eighteen hundred plays, 
and four hundred other works. Of these several were 
epics now wholly forgotten. . . . The hordes of poets 
that lived with him rose no higher than the pun or vulgar 
metaphor. The best they could do was to call their 
enemies, the English— as now the Americans— 'pigs!' 
At that time the~poets of Spain turned out epics by the 
thousand; yet, ... for two hundred years Spain has 
wallowed in the harbarism*of a nation without a book 
it can call its own!" 

But says another charming writer, a teacher of litera- 
ture: "Most people, and well educated people at that, 
will tell you they know of no Spanish literature beyond 






the legends of the Cid and that wonderful production 
of Cervantes, 'Don Quixote,' which 'laughed Spain's 
chivalry away. ' Yet there is a vast treasure for the 
student of Spanish who succeeds in passing these two 
sentinels who guard, the storehouse. . . . There is Cal- 
deron, for instance, that wonderful poet- dramatist, so 
often compared with Shakespeare. Emerson appreciated 
him, and more than once has he paid tribute to the 
beauty of Calderon's imagery, and his keen insight into 
human nature. Contemporaries of Calderon and Cer- 
vantes are two other great men, Lope de Vega and 
Quevado; the last named a satirist, bitter of disposi- 
tion, but endowed with clearest insights. These four 
great names— Cervantes, Calderon, Lope de Vega and 
Quevado — would by themselves form a glorious gar- 
land of dramas, lyrics, novels and satires for Spain. 
. . . Then there are the 'Moorish Tales,' sometimes 
written by Moors, sometimes by Castilians, dealing 
with chivalric encounters between youths of noble 
families. . . . We rarely think of Christopher Colum- 
bus as an author; and yet his letters and memorials 
are wonderfully interesting reading — a mixture of his- 
tory and mysticism, and in good Castilian. . . . The 
'Conquest of Mexico,' by Antonio de Solis, has been 
called by competent critics one of the greatest of prose 
epics; and indeed, there is something about the Span- 
ish language that lends itself marvellously well to 
the recital of great deeds and high thoughts. It is a 
language simple, direct, dignified, sonorous — truly, 
as has been said, the language par excellence for 
addressing the Deity ! . . . Spain has given the world 
models of dramatic art: France has many times 
copied from her, and with but little change, the plot 
and treatment of some play which we now generally 
ascribe to the Frenchman, having lost sight of the 



250 MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 

Spanish original. Moliere himself drew largely from 
the Spanish dramas, as did other well-known drama- 
tists of France. Spain's Golden Age corresponded 
closely with her pre-eminence in conquest and internal 
development; after that burst of glory Spain slept — re- 
tired, rather, in dignified reserve, to brood alone upon 
her poverty and fallen grandeur. But there has been 
an. awakening, within the past fifty years, and Spain, 
says William Dean Howells, has made more progress in 
intellectual activity during the last half -century than 
any other nation. A surprising statement, this; but 
Howells generally knows whereof he speaks. In 
novels, poetry and metaphysical and philosophical 
works, there has been a great outpouring ; Juan Valera, 
the author of 'Pepita Ximenez,' is one of her best- 
known modern authors; Castelar, the orator, has a 
world-wide reputation for his brilliant, eloquent 
speeches. Simultaneously with this development in 
the Spain of to-day, we note the appearance of literary 
works of merit throughout all Spanish America, chiefly 
taking the form of novels. And in this connection one 
recalls particularly that charming idyl of South-Amer- 
ican life, 'Maria', (written a few years ago by one Jorge 
Isaacs, a native of the United States of Colombia), and 
vyhich has been translated into nearly every modern 
language. In this brief mention of a few of Spain's 
great names, merely a hint is given of what awaits the 
student of Spanish : and that is as keen a pleasure as 
he can find in the literature of either France or Ger- 
many, and perhaps more of interest, because of its com- 
parative newness and freshness; so he can partake 
somewhat of the joys of an explorer in a rarely- 
traversed land !" 

There can be no reasonable doubt that the events of 
the past year, the upheavals of musty traditions and' 



MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 251 

century -old customs, proceeding from contact with 
American soldiers and sailors, from a shattering of 
cherished idols and superstitions— these events will 
bring about a revival of artistic and literary activities. 
If Spain accepts the lessons of the war, and arouses her- 
self from her sleep of centuries, she may yet leap 
abreast her foremost rival in the race for intellectual 
supremacy. In scientific literature and inventions, 
Spain will probably ever lag behind ; she has shown 
conclusively that she lacks the spirit of scientific inves- 
tigation. But for literature her noble and sonorous lan- 
guage is the most fitting speech devised by God ; and 
may it be applied by those who possess its gift. 

One is tempted to linger on the bright side of the pic- 
ture; but deep shadows cast themselves across the 
canvas. 

In a forecast of Spain's future one must take heed to 
figures which cannot be controverted. For instance: of 
Spain's total population estimated at eighteen millions, 
not more than one-third can read and write; quite half 
the whole number have no trade or profession; not two 
millions attend school of any sort; of literary writers of 
all classes there are less than 1,300; with 20,000 physi- 
cians, 100 office-holders, 64,000 pensioners; 500,000 
servants; 39,000 teachers; 500,000 devoted to agriculture 
(such as it is); more than 90,000 are professional beg- 
gars. Two million, six hundred thousand of the 
women are unable to read or write, and nearly a mil- 
lion women earn their living by bard labor in the fields. 
They have few enjoyments in common with the men, 
though they take as great pleasure in attendance upon 
the bull-fights as tbeir husbands and brothers, the gal- 
lant "toreadores" being their ideal heroes; the brutal 
spectacles their highest conception of an entertainment. 
The national character, in fact, may be assumed by a 



252 MODEBN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 

perusal of the statistics of the annual bull-fights, the in- 
terest in which. instead of diminishing, is rather increas- 
ing. According to a report hy a consul-general of the 
United States, during the season of six months in 1896, 
between April and October, 478 bull-fights took place, in 
which were slaughtered 1,218 bulls, valued at $300,000, 
and 5,730 horses, estimated at $200,000. Twenty-five 
"maiadores" were employed, at a cost of $221,000; 
while fighters of less renown received from $300 to $400 
for their services; some being paid as high as $850 each. 
A famous "espada" known as "Guerrita" appeared in 
sixty-eight fights, killed 174 bulls, and received $51,000; 
another, "Bombita," fought 43 times, killed 112 
bulls, and was paid$21, 000; "Mazantini" 29 times, kill- 
ing 68 bulls, and was rewarded with $21,700. These are 
official statistics. During last season (1898) the most 
popular "toreador" took part in 65 fights, killed 133 
Lulls, and carried off $60,000; the only injuries he sus- 
tained being a bruise on his foot and a slight wound in 
the leg. The successful bull-fighters are from the 
lower classes and are uneducated; yet are courted and 
even feared, no newspaper, whatever may be its stand- 
ing and influence, daring to give them anything but 
praise, as they have their bands of cutthroat adherents 
who inflict severe punishment upon those incurring 
their enmity. 

Spain is the only country pretending to civilization 
in which the bull-fight flourishes, and has the character 
of a national pastime. It is the only country, too, where 
i" is not only tolerated by the church, but where the 
church countenances and upholds it. 

At the outbreak of the war between Spain and the 
United States, Signor Oispi, Italy's greatest states- 
man, was asked his opinion as to the result, and made 
the following prophetic statement: "It will be the end 




Wml^SBSBSSSBSKKmBBES^^SSBSWW-' 



MODERN SPAIN AND HER FUTURE. 253 



of Spain; though I regret, as do all Italians, that our 
Latin sister has allowed herself to be drawn into such 
a blmd alley, from which she cannot possibly escape 
without great injury. She is valiant, she is chivalrous 
— yes; but those are virtues of the Middle Ages, as un 
derstood by the grandees of Spain. In our nineteenth 
century initiative is necessary — a practical spirit — 
which in the Spaniards is absolutely wanting. Spain 
has committed monstrous sins, for which, she is paying 
now. I do not know that the Americans have any right 
to interfere in the affairs of Cuba ; but the Spaniards 
have certainly shown themselves cruel, barbarous, and 
incapable of governing the 'Pearl of the Antilles;' and 
in one way or another they will lose that beautiful 
colony. The prime cause of Spain's condition is the 
general state of ignorance — in the upper, as well as the 
lower classes!" 

"When -this century opened, or in 1800, Spain gov- 
erned colonies w T ith an extent of 10,000,0v>0 square miles ; 
now she barely owns a total of 244,000 square miles. 
In May, 1898, she lost Manila and the Philippines when 
Commodore Dewey sank her Asiatic fleet; Cuba, when 
Cervera's splendid squadron was shattered in July; 
Porto Rico, when the Peace Protocol found American 
soldiers on that island, in August. And before the year 
closed, she had conveyed — and sanctioned that convey- 
ance by treaty — all her sovereignty in America, besides 
parting with nearly all her possessions in Asia. 

The year 1899 found her owning no territory what- 
ever in free America. 



THE END. 



MPMrapsi^ 




HAVE YOU READ 

AINSLEE'S MAGAZINE? 

BT HAS MANY POINTS OF EXCELLENCE 

over any other magazine published, and costs but TEN CENT^ 
a copy. 

ITS MOTTO IS QUALITY RATHER THAN QUANTITY, 

We give our readers a good big ten cents* worth (over ! oo page* 
of reading matter every month). 

ARTICLES OF INTEREST 

to the every-day man and woman, written by the best authors 
Anyone of ordinary intelligence will read Ainslee's 

from cover to cover, and be interested and instructed by every 
article. He will not find pages of dry scientific discussion of 
which he comprehends little and cares less. Neither will he find 
the articles so trivial in character as to be unworthy of his time, 

WE ARE GIVING THE PUBLIC THE BEST MAGAZINE 

for the average man and woman, and in the selection ®% 
our literary material this "average" individual is always kept in 
mind as the one to whom we are catering. We do not claim it 
to be the largest, the most scientific, the most profound, or th« 
most humorous; but 

WE DO STAND FIRM ON THE ASSERTION 

that it is the very beat magazine published, for the enter- 
tainment and instruction of the entire household in our American 
homes. 

BUY A COPY THIS MONTH, 

read it, have your wife read it, let the old folks read it, and thea 
pass it over to the children, and you will all like it so welE 

you will never thereafter be without it, 

•OLD BY ALL NEWSDEALERS. 

STREET & SMITH, Publishers, New York. 






\ THE} \ 






Historical Series 



POPULAR histories of subjects in which 
the public are interested. No dry statistics. 
Written in narrative style, and "read like novels." 
A veritable hit. 

Retail Price, 10 Cents. 



CATAI^O OXXE} . 



t 



t 



I 



8. Spain and the Spaniards. By E. Essex Winthrop. 
7. The Life of Admiral Dewey. By Will M. Clemens. 
6 Uncle Barn's Ships. A History of our Navy. By 

A. D. Hall I 

5. A Life of the Pope (Leo the Thirteenth). By ^ 

A. D Hall. 
4. Hawaii. By A. D. Hall. 
3. Porto Rico. By A. D. Hall. 
2. The Philippines. By A. D. Hall. 
1. Cuba. By A. D. Hall. 

For sale by newsdealers everywhere, or sent by mail, postpaid 
by the publishers, on receipt of price. 

STREET & SMITH, Publishers. 

238 WILLIAM ST., NEW YORK. 



First COPY, 
1898 



^UG8 1899 






^ 



HISTORICAL SERIES No. 8 10 CENT* 




B. E55EX WINTHROP 



r & SMITH, PUBLISHERS, NEW YORK 



HISTORICAL SERIES 



A monthly publication devoted to good literature. By- 
subscription, fi.oo per year. March, 1899. 
Entered as second-class matter at New York Post-office. 



u 





all's 



Vegetable 
Sicilian . . 



Hair Renewer 



Restores color to faded or gray hair. Makes the hair grow. 
Stops falling of the hair. Cures dandruff. Prevents baldness. 

If your druggist cannot supply you, send one dollar to R P. Hall & Co., Nashua, N. H. 

LEW '13 



